Question Text-to-Speech software for Windows 7 that works offline ?

[Jasonandson]

I am flabbergasted that it is so hard to find this:

A software that runs on Windows 7 that is able to do TTS (Text-to-Speech) , does not require an internet connection to run and is capable of producing high quality TTS.

I searched for hours and Balabolka seems to be what i need, but the Voices either suck or cannot be used allthough they are listed. I downloaded some Voices and can select them but an error
occurs when i want to use them "class not registered" or something like that.

So can you suggest an alternative to Balabolka that meets my requirements?

Or can you tell me the names of some good Voices (American English male and female) that i can definitely use in Balabolka in windows 7 , if done right.

I thought there was an abundance of software like that and would operate like a DAW and the voices would be like vst plugins.

Anyways i would appreciate your help a lot.

Thanks in advance

 

[COLGeek]

Why Win 7? What is the source for the first "T" in TTS. What is the use-case for this need?

Knowing these things may help narrow down your options.

Googling "Balabolka alternatives" provides multiple options, that may/may not meet your needs.

 

[Jasonandson]

Why Win 7? What is the source for the first "T" in TTS. What is the use-case for this need?

Knowing these things may help narrow down your options.

Googling "Balabolka alternatives" provides multiple options, that may/may not meet your needs.

Win7 because this is the OS i use for my day to day stuff. I bent win7 to my exact needs and wishes and i am not planing on doing the same win win10/11. I might change my mind if someone would educate me how to prevent win10 to send any information to microsoft.

I have 5 computers that i use:

1. my main computer: (for internet and many other things)
Windows 7 Professional 64-bit SP1
CPU
Intel Core i7 2600 @ 3.40GHz 22 °C
Sandy Bridge 32nm Technology
GeForce GTX 1080
16,0GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 665MHz (9-9-9-24)

2. my Pc for music creation:
Windows 10
i7 3770
16gig of fast ram
gtx ? ti

3. my old pc for music creation
winXp
amd athlon 64 x2 6000
8gb ram

4. a pc for pre-testing stuff before i install them on my i7 music pc:
Windows 10
i7 3770
8gig of fast ram
onboard grafics ( i have 980ti but the case of the PC is too small)

5. A generic laptop with win7.

______________________________________________
back to the topic:

The sources of the text vary.
Mostly short text i wrote or let gptX generate.
Wikipedia articles.
Pdfs would be great.

The use case would be either to use the recorded TTS output in my music or just enjoy listening to it.
TTS for wikipedia or pdfs when i am tired or my eyes are tired.

But it would be great to have mp3s of long wikipedia articles or pdfs.

 

[USAFRet]

I might change my mind if someone would educate me how to prevent win10 to send any information to microsoft.

You do realize...Win 7 does the same.

New Windows 7 'security-only' update installs telemetry/snooping, uh, feature

Three years ago, Microsoft promised to keep Win7 and 8.1 updated with two tracks of patches - Monthly Rollups that include everything and “security-only” patches that are supposed to be limited to security fixes. Guess what just happened.

www.computerworld.com

As well as the far greater mountain of information from your browsers and cellphone.

 

[Jasonandson]

You do realize...Win 7 does the same.

I thought that win7 was less intrusive and could be tamed mare easyly (no cortana for example ).
Would you say that there is ZERO difference privacy wise between 7 and 10 and that 7 is not easyer to be manipulated to counteract the privacy intrusion?

 

[USAFRet]

I thought that win7 was less intrusive and could be tamed mare easyly (no cortana for example ).
Would you say that there is ZERO difference privacy wise between 7 and 10 and that 7 is not easyer to be manipulated to counteract the privacy intrusion?

I wouldn't say "zero" difference.
But a lot of the back end things in Win 10 that people are (needlessly, IMHO) freaked out about also exist in Win 7.

 

[Jasonandson]

damn . and windows 10 is supposed to have very good TTS... mhhh maybe just maybe.....
Can you give me link that describes how to minimize privacy intrusion of windows 10 and explains what the limitations are?

 

[USAFRet]

damn . and windows 10 is supposed to have very good TTS... mhhh maybe just maybe.....
Can you give me link that describes how to minimize privacy intrusion of windows 10 and explains what the limitations are?

All I do is turn off most of the selections available in the set up of a new install.
Location, etc.

I could search and find a bunch of links. The same ones that you could find.
I could NOT tell you which are good or bad. Simply because I don't use them.

And if you DO find something, do NOT blindly run whatever script you might get.
Those very often do more harm than good.

 

[Math Geek]

win 7 can still be telemetry free but you do have to remove any updates that added it in. you can google lists easy enough of what updates to avoid. was my daily driver for long time and i refused to move to win 10/11.

took a while but i finally went linux for my daily driver and run win 10 in a vm for the few things i do with it. basically some games that need win 10. the vm will isolate your data from MS collections as it only has access to the virtual disk created for it. so all MS knows about me is i like to play a couple games. i don't do anything else on the vm and use linux for all my day to day.

 

[Jasonandson]

And if you DO find something, do NOT blindly run whatever script you might get.
Those very often do more harm than good.

good advice thanks.

all MS knows about me is i like to play a couple games.

I really like VMs. I was once able to use an old laser printer that had no drivers for windows 7 in a XP VM. The only things i dont like about oracle vm virtual box is that it does not come with all packages and USB is tricky sometimes and shared drives / drive locations are not that intuitively activated.

But hey for a free software it is awesome.
I think i will dig deeper into VMs.

Lets say you run win10 natively on a pc:
Windows 7 Professional 64-bit Sp1
Intel Core i7 2600 @ 3.40GHz 30 °C
16,0GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 665MHz (9-9-9-24)
55UHD_LCD_TV (3840x2160@60Hz)
4095MB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 (Sapphire/PCPartner) 25 °C
119GB SanDisk SSD6

and you call that 100% efficiancy .

If you run a VM of win 10 on that exact system using oracle virtual box,
how efficiant will it be? 80/90/95 %?


edit: that is what "AI" answered:
It is difficult to give an exact efficiency percentage as there are many factors that can affect the performance of a virtual machine (VM). However, in general, running a VM will likely result in some performance loss compared to running an operating system natively on hardware. This is because the host operating system (in this case, the one running on your physical PC) has to share resources such as CPU, RAM, and disk I/O with the guest operating system running in the VM.
That being said, Oracle VirtualBox is a well-designed and efficient virtualization software that can provide good performance for most use cases. Depending on the workload and configuration of your VM, you may experience anywhere from a minor to a significant reduction in performance compared to running Windows 10 natively on your PC. In general, I would expect the efficiency of a Windows 10 VM running on the hardware you described to be in the range of 80-90%.

 

[Math Geek]

no idea what % it would run at.

i give my win 10 vm : 12 cores, 32 gb ram, it's own ssd and gpu. i can't "feel" any difference using it vs a native install. it plays the games i ask it to without any problems or concerns. i don't spend time benchmarking and such so no idea how it compares on that front.

you would slow it down if it is sharing a physical drive, especially a slower spinning disk. that's about the only time i've noticed a vm running slower than expected is if it is fighting for hdd time with something else. that's a big reason i like everything to run off its own physical disk. i can have something in the background working a disk to the max and it slows nothing down since that disk is only doing that one thing.

OS's are running on their own drives so don't even know there's a disk running flat out.