Trying to get text-to-speech and [[commands]] working in Audition.

[M0b1us]

[PLEASE BE NICE! I really am trying to learn this. Please give specific instructions and reference material and don't dismissively refer me to "go find a tutorial" as many do. If such tutorials worked, or even actually existed (without needing some "only experienced people already know" search terms), then I'd not be asking for help.]

Windows 11 (latest update) + latest Adobe CC 2023 versions (not-beta).

I'm trying to use text-to-speech in Audition, but in a singing style as I've read is possible. First problem is that any of the [[commands]] don't work. They get read back as text. The next problem is that I'm not getting new voices to show up. I've followed instructions for downloading them for Windows 11, and while they do show up in Windows settings, they don't show up with Audition. What's worse is that their appearing in Audition is inconsistent within Audition itself. And why are some of the menus unusable? They're obviously supposed to be (or they'd not be there would they).

How do I get this to work? If there's another (GOOD & SUPPORTED) plugin I need then please let me know. (But then why still aren't the basic things working?)

And again, please don't dismiss me to "go watch beginner tutorials" because, they wouldn't fix these problems (after all, I've already done the "beginner research" on this and tried to follow along). But since that didn't work then that's why I'm asking.

Also I've found tutorials are only written for people who don't need them. At best they require knowledge and experience well beyond the tutorial in order to follow along, and at worst I've found ones that are just egotistical bragging on the writer's knowledge while trying to confuse the person watching/reading. Plus, because Adobe likes to be unnecessarily confusing they decide to rename and rearrange stuff from time to time so tutorials aren't even consistent with each other or the current version. (SERIOUSLY ADOBE, the business model of "make it extremely hard for new users to want your product" and "frequently confuse and make things harder for your existing users to keep up with re-learning", doesn't make sense.)

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

All the above is noted, and replicated here in terms of a complete lack of modifier control - the commands as given simply don't work.

Now let's look at (almost certainly) what's going on. It's worth noting what it says at the top of the help page for it:

"The Generate Speech tool enables you to paste or type text, and generate a realistic voice-over or narration track. The tool uses the libraries available in your Operating System. Use this tool to create synthesized voices for videos, games, and audio productions.

Speech Generation on Mac uses a different underlying speech synthesis engine than Windows. Both engines are provided by the respective operating system and are not cross-platform compatible. As such, the XML tags that Windows supports in its engine are not compatible on Mac, and vice versa for the tag format that Mac supports."

I bolded the important bit. Now, back in the mists of time the emphasis controls did work (sort of). So why not now? It's pretty clear, from looking at all the Microsoft stuff about voice generation that they've decided to monetise the entire operation, so if you want better voices with the ability to control emphasis, etc, you have to go for the upmarket model. The bit that Audition still has direct access to is very basic now - almost to the point of being useless. Now it may be that it's just the Audition interface that has restrictions, but I don't think so - it's the same as it has always been, and it definitely let you put speech effects in that actually worked.

So I'm afraid that if you want a good speech generation result, you'll have to look elsewhere, and almost certainly pay for it. If anybody knows any differently, they've not said - and people have asked very similar questions before. Even when it did work a little better it was still pretty clunky, and getting additional voices to work was always a bit of a pain.

[M0b1us]

So then why hasn't Adobe fixed this, especially if its been several years? There's many simple solutions, from letting you actually pull the voices already installed on Windows (as you see from my screenshots), or letting you point to a folder with other voice narraters, or simply make their own and allow the comunity to add to the repository of them.

It's one of the MANY things I'm dissatisfied with about the Adobe software. Some of it is really good, and some is far worse than trash, and they don't care for support or making it inviting for new users.

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

Adobe hasn't 'fixed' this, partly because Microsoft would want paying for a better version, and the subscription to Audition is quite high enough already. The other reason is almost certainly because the big players (think seat numbers in the millions - yes, really) have indicated that they either don't want it, or are not prepared to pay extra for it. And to corporate Adobe, those are the people that count - not you and me.

[M0b1us]

Yeah, that makes sense, as bad as it sucks.

Do you know of any plugins or other software that does this function?

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

It's not normally the sort of thing I do (I have loads of real voices available, and it's good to employ them occasionally), but Techradar did a round-up which will give you some sort of an idea of what to go for. You can find it here. I found another list as well - a wide variety of systems on offer in this list.