Converting text to speech can add a new level of interactivity to our Python applications. Whether we want to create a virtual assistant or simply make our program more engaging,pyttsx3 is a library used for converting text into speech. This offline tool offers flexibility with male and female voice options and different TTS engines. Now lets understand how to implement it.
1. Installing pyttsx3
To installpyttsx3module first of all we have to open the terminal and run the following command:
pip install pyttsx3
If we receive errors such as No module named win32com.client, No module named win32 or No module named win32api we will need to additionally install pypiwin32using below command:
pip install pypiwin32
2. Importing and Initializing Speech Engine
Once the library is installed, we can import it into your Python script and initialize thepyttsx3 engine. This engine is responsible for handling text-to-speech conversion.initfunction is used to get an engine instance for the speech synthesis
pyttsx3 supports three different text-to-speech engines depending on your platform:
- sapi5: Default engine on Windows.
- nsss: Available on Mac OS X.
- espeak: Available on Linux and other platforms.
Library automatically selects appropriate engine based on our operating system, but we can switch between them if needed.
Pythonimportpyttsx3engine=pyttsx3.init()
3. Customizing Speech Properties
We can adjust several properties of the speech such as rate, volume and voice.
engine.getProperty('rate'): This fetches current rate (speed) at which the speech is being spoken.Rateis measured in words per minute (wpm).engine.setProperty('rate', rate - 50): This sets the new rate (speed) for the speech engine.engine.setProperty('volume', 1): This controls the volume (loudness) of the speech. Value ranges from0.0 to 1.0.voices = engine.getProperty('voices'): This retrieves the available voices from the speech engine. Thevoices is a list of available voice objects and each object contains properties such as the voice’s ID, name, gender and language.
Pythonrate=engine.getProperty('rate')engine.setProperty('rate',rate-50)engine.setProperty('volume',1)voices=engine.getProperty('voices')engine.setProperty('voice',voices[0].id)4. Converting Text to Speech
Now that properties are set we can convert any text to speech. Use thesay() method to add text we want to be spoken, then callrunAndWait() to make the engine process the speech.
Pythonengine.say("Hello sir, how may I help you, sir.")engine.runAndWait()Output :
From the above code it would be a voice saying
'Hello sir, how may I help you, sir.'
Thepyttsx3 allows us to easily convert text to speech in Python with full control over speech’s speed, volume and voice type. Whether we're working on a project that requires audio feedback or simply want to add an interactive feature, customizing these properties gives us the flexibility to make the speech sound exactly the way we want.