How to Use Google Text-to-Speech (gTTS) for Fast and Natural Speech Synthesis in Ubuntu

In an era where text-to-speech technology is becoming increasingly valuable for accessibility, communication, and automation, Google Text-to-Speech (gTTS) stands out as a premier choice for Ubuntu users seeking a fast and natural-sounding solution. This guide aims to provide you with everything you need to know to effectively utilize gTTS, from installation to advanced features. By comparing it with alternatives like Mozilla TTS, Festival, and eSpeak, we’ll highlight gTTS’s advantages, ensuring you can make informed decisions for your speech synthesis needs. Whether you’re a developer, content creator, or simply looking to enhance your productivity, gTTS offers a seamless way to convert text into clear, articulate speech.

Table of Contents

1. Why Choose Google Text-to-Speech (gTTS)?
2. Step 1: Installing Google Text-to-Speech (gTTS)
3. Step 2: Basic Usage of Google Text-to-Speech (gTTS)
4. Step 3: Selecting Language and Voice
5. Step 4: Customizing Speed and Volume
6. Comparison with Other TTS Tools
   • Mozilla TTS
   • Festival and eSpeak
7. Step 5: Advanced Options
   • Converting Text from a File
   • Piping Output to Play Directly
8. Conclusion

Why Choose Google Text-to-Speech (gTTS)?

Google Text-to-Speech (gTTS) is a powerful, free tool that provides fast, natural-sounding speech synthesis for Ubuntu. It stands out because of its superior speed, natural voice output, and ease of use compared to other options like Mozilla TTS, Festival, and eSpeak. In this guide, you’ll learn how to harness the capabilities of gTTS, configure voice options, and understand how it stacks up against other TTS tools.

Step 1: Installing Google Text-to-Speech (gTTS)

To use Google Text-to-Speech (gTTS) on Ubuntu, you’ll need to install the gtts Python package. Open your terminal and run the following commands:

$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install python3-pip
$ pip3 install gtts

This will install the gtts package and its dependencies.

Step 2: Basic Usage of Google Text-to-Speech (gTTS)

Once the package is installed, you can generate speech from text with a simple command. Here’s an example of converting a short string into an MP3 file:

$ gtts-cli "Hello, welcome to the Google Text-to-Speech tutorial" --output hello.mp3

To play the audio file, you can use mpg321:

$ mpg321 hello.mp3

Step 3: Selecting Language and Voice

By default, Google Text-to-Speech (gTTS) uses English, but you can select from a wide variety of languages and accents by specifying the -l option:

$ gtts-cli "Bonjour, comment ça va?" --lang fr --output bonjour.mp3

For a full list of supported languages:

$ gtts-cli --all

Step 4: Customizing Speed and Volume

You can modify the speed of speech using the --slow flag, which makes the speech output slower:

$ gtts-cli "This is a slow speech example" --slow --output slow.mp3

However, to control the volume, you will need to adjust the volume with the player, such as mpg321, as gTTS does not have a built-in volume control feature.

Comparison with Other TTS Tools

Mozilla TTS

While Mozilla TTS is another free and open-source option, it often takes significantly longer to process text, especially with longer passages. The speech synthesis from Mozilla TTS also tends to sound less natural, and its pronunciation can be off compared to Google Text-to-Speech (gTTS).

Festival and eSpeak

Festival and eSpeak are older speech synthesis engines. While they are lightweight and faster than Mozilla TTS, the robotic nature of their voice output leaves much to be desired. Festival is a slight improvement over eSpeak, but both are inferior to Google Text-to-Speech (gTTS) in terms of naturalness and clarity.

External Link: For more information on Mozilla TTS, check out the official Mozilla TTS GitHub page.

Step 5: Advanced Options

1. Converting Text from a File

To generate speech from the contents of a text file:

$ gtts-cli -f input.txt --output speech.mp3

2. Piping Output to Play Directly

$ gtts-cli "This is piped directly to mpg321" | mpg321 -

You can pipe the output of Google Text-to-Speech (gTTS) directly to a player like mpg321:

This skips the step of creating an MP3 file and plays the audio immediately.

Conclusion

Google Text-to-Speech (gTTS) offers fast, natural-sounding speech synthesis that outperforms many other TTS tools available for Ubuntu. Its speed, ease of use, and range of voice options make it the go-to solution for generating speech from text. Whether you’re scripting, building applications, or just need a simple command-line TTS tool, Google Text-to-Speech (gTTS) is a powerful and flexible option.

For more advanced control over voices and options, you can explore using the Google Cloud Text-to-Speech API, which provides even more voices and configurations.