Install eSpeak on Ubuntu

eSpeak is free and open-source software that can be used to convert text to voice in English and other languages. It can be installed on Windows and Linux-based operating systems. eSpeak takes input from the string or files and generates an audio format file. You can play this file using any player.

Gespeaker is a graphical interface for eSpeak. It is also used to play a text file in multiple languages. You can also record a text file in WAV format for future listening.

Features

• Speak text from a file
• Can be used with screen-readers and other programs in Windows
• Ported to several platforms, including Android, Mac OSX, etc.
• Supports multiple languages

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install eSpeak and Gespeaker on an Ubuntu desktop system. This procedure is compatible with Ubuntu 20.04 and Ubuntu 22.04.

Step 1 – Install eSpeak

By default, this tool is available in all major Linux distributions. You can install it by just running the following command:

apt-get install espeak -y

Once the installation is finished, verify the installed version of eSpeak with the following command:

espeak --version

You should get the following output:

eSpeak text-to-speech: 1.47.11 03.May.13 Data at: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/espeak-data

Step 2 – Generate Audio File with eSpeak

Now, let’s speak the line “Hi Welcome to eSpeak” and record it to the file1.mp4 audio file:

espeak "Hi Welcome to eSpeak" -w file1.mp4 -g 60 -p 70 -s 100 -v en-us

You can now play the file1.mp4 using any audio player.

You can also specify the text file that you want to record in the mp4 format.

First, create a sample file named file.txt:

nano file.txt

Add the following contents:

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Save and close the file when you are finished.

Next, run the following command to convert file.txt to the mp4 audio format file named file2.mp4:

espeak -f file.txt -w file2.mp4 -g 60 -p 70 -s 100 -v en-us

Step 3 – Install Gspeaker

Gespeaker is a GUI interface for eSpeak. It provides a graphical interface to manage text-to-speech features.

You can install it with the following command:

apt-get install gespeaker -y

Once the installation is completed, you can launch it from your Unity search bar. You should see the following page:

You can now type any text that you want to play inside the “Insert text to play” bar and click on the Play button to hear it.

You can also click on the Record button and save it to the audio file for future listening.

Conclusion

In the above guide, you learned how to install eSpeak and Gspeaker on Ubuntu 20.04. You can now easily convert any text file into an audio file. Try it today on dedicated server hosting from Atlantic.Net!