Are there any other voices for Garmin Mobile PC?

Hello learned freinds.
This is a great little toy and i have even greater plans for it.
Going on holidays to the U.K. soon and will be buying a 7 or 9 inch touchscreen to connect to it so i can then run several programs (gps based) like Oziexplorer in the 4x4.
Anyway the question im asking is are there other voices and how do you load them to gmpc.
My first venture in to this was when i loaded it on vista it had english anna speaking street names but on the xp laptop it had none.
After reading a bit i found a file that loaded english mary to the windows side of the laptop and there it was when i started gmpc.
Albeit very sqaure and broken, not nearly as sweet as the vista anna.
I also read the difference is in the version of tts they use and you cant reverse engineer it to work on xp pro.
I downloaded a voice from garmin (the spooky one) and thought it would be as easy as copying the file to the voice directory, as both where vps files but it didn't work.
so ..... any ideas

I'm running XP Home on my desktop. I have the following list of voices available when I go into "Settings >> Audio >> Voice":

American English
American English - Anna (Speaks street names)
American English - Mary (Speaks street names)
Deutsch
Francais
Italiano
Espanol
British English
Francais Canadien

I have the following files in the ...\GarminMobilePC\Voice folder:

Deutsch__.vpm
English_American_.vpm
English_British_.vpm
Espanol_European_.vpm
Francais_Canadian_.vpm
Francais_European_.vpm
Italiano__.vpm

I have exactly the same thing in Vista on my laptop. I installed them both from the same CD. I don't think it has anything to do with the operating system.

...ken...

If I recall correctly, some voices were added in one of the earlier downloadable versions. The DVD installation may not have all of the above voices, but once you go to Garmin site to download an upgraded version, you may have all the files Ken listed.

I have 5 computers here, all with GMPC 5.00.30. 2 XP ones have both Mary and Anna, the other XP has Mary only and the Vista one has Anna only.
I haven't checked what is different amongst them yet. Aren't these just voices you get from Microsoft?

Edit.. Microsoft Anna, a voice released with Vista, comes with Streets and Trips. Download the trial Streets & Trips 2009 to your XP computer and you will probably have it for GMPC.

Terry

I have 5.00.50 on both computers. I have Streets&Trips2008 on both computers. And I have Mappoint2009 on both computers.

No way I'm going to try to reverse-engineer the installation sequence that got me to where I am.

...ken...

Sorry, that advice was directed at the OP who wanted Anna on their XP computer.

Terry

I just did a quick test. On the XP computer that didn't have Anna, I started a MapPoint 2009 installation. After it got past the text to speech section, I cancelled the installation. Now GMPC has Anna.

Terry

Correction: What I mentioned earlier is incorrect, of course. There was an update version which added languages (not voices)...

You guys are correct, Streets & Trips and also MapPoint adds Microsoft Anna text-to-speech engine. Vista I think comes with it's own version of Microsoft Anna already installed. If an XP installation has no TTS, I think there is a way to download the needed files from microsoft.com. I'm not sure if Garmin Mobile PC installation DVD installs a text-to-speech engine.

Microsoft Anna is an American voice. Microsoft Mary is an English voice, and I'm guessing you may see one or the other text-to-speech engine based on which localized version of Microsoft Windows you may have installed (or would this depend on your Windows language preferences?).

Mary is the old American voice and Anna is the newer American model developed for Vista. I always liked the British one better but it doesn't speak street names.

Terry

Attached Images

Voices.jpg (86.3 KB)

I see. That's interesting. Thanks for posting the screenshot, I don't have Mary in my GMPC. However, I do recall, when I installed Microsoft AutoRoute 2007 (a European product) a few years ago, it did install a text-to-speech engine, which to the best of my recollection was named Microsoft Mary, and it was British. But I may be wrong about this, as it was long ago.

But to address the missing Microsoft Anna issue, I just did a quick Google search, and it seems there is no shortage of websites that offer installation instructions and download links to that (and other) text-to-speech engines. My guess is that Garmin Mobile PC will recognize Microsoft Anna, once you install it (her) to your operating system.

I didn't have Mary (xp pro) I downloaded and installed the following, and now I have her.

Microsoft Mary, Mike and Sam 5.0 <edit>Expired link</edit>

I took the opportunity to test both Microsoft Mary and Anna today on a short trip. I had to glance at the display to understand what either of them were saying when they read street names. So, I'm going back to British English with no street names.

Terry

I wander if anyone has experimented with non-Microsoft text-to-speech engines, and if there is something compatible that is better than Microsoft Anna and Microsoft Mary.

I just tried installing AT&T Natural Voices, and the installed voice isn't recognized by Mobile PC, so it looks like it doesn't recognize non-Microsoft engines.

Garmin MobilePC uses as default Microsoft's TTS Speech Engine with the voice of Anna or Mary.
If you select Anna or Mary the Text is also set to English.
It is not so difficult to change the engine in an other TTS one with a different voice but the spoken direction text (Left On, Right, Roundabout) is fixed by Garmin to English and I don't know how to change that.

So it is only significant to select an engine with an English voice.

System: Windows XP Pro
GarminMobilePC_50060

Select an other Speech Engine:
Get Microsoft voices e.g. speechsdk51.exe from Microsoft:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=5e86ec97-40a7-453f-b0ee-6583171b4530&displaylang=en

Install and select Anna's voice.
Select this voice in Garmin, if it's right you will see:
O American English - Anna (Speaks street names)
Exit Garmin.

Install the voice of your choice (Microsoft, Loquendo or Scansoft).
For this example I took Loquendo's 'Simon'.

Change the Speech Engine:
1 - Start the Registry editor by using Start->Run and enter Regedit and hit Enter.
2 - Browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Speech\Voices\Tokens
3 - There you will see one or more keys containing the names of installed Speech Engines.
e.g. MSSam, LQSimon and MS-Anna-1033-20-SDK
4 - Select the 'Attributes' Key of MS-Anna and change the 'Name' field on the right in 'Microsoft' or 'xxxx'.
5 - Go into the key that resembles the speech engine you want to use and open the 'Attributes' key. e.g. LQSimon
Select the 'Name' field on the right and Edit - Modify this field.
Change 'Simon' to "Microsoft Anna".
6 - Exit Regedit.

That's all.....this is my first post on this forum.

Installed also AT&T Natural Voices, Mike and Crystal and they are recognized
also using the above method.

Hi Lion. Welcome to Laptop GPS World, and thanks for sharing the Registry edit on the previous page. After many months of listening to it, I'm already used to the default voice of Garmin Mobile PC, but I still remember that I didn't like it much at first. Perhaps I should look around for better alternative. Which voice do you use?

Hi Marvin,
As I said it's only usefull to change the voice if your native language
is English because Garmin build it's own "direction text" file in English.
I am Dutch so I don't like a Dutch voice saying "roundabout".
In my language a roundabout is a "rotonde" so I am still using
the default non TTS Dutch voice ......

But I am not finished yet with Garmin , I keep in touch......

Subject: Garmin Mobile PC

I have translated the "Text-to-Speech" file in Que.exe in Dutch.
I did this with a hex editor (Winhex).
The list starts at address 00471577 and ends at 00471FE0.
You need a lot of patient and time to place the translated words
at the exact place and space provided for them.
The routing is in Dutch now but....
the results are a little bit disappointing because the
pronouncement of the street names is bad.
So I still keep using the non TTS voice.

Lion