Vocalizer 7

BETA FEATURE:

The Vocalizer 7 TTS engine is currently available as a beta feature. Further testing and updates may take place while Vocalizer 7 is in beta.

We encourage you to share feedback at [e-mail].

Selecting the Vocalizer 7 TTS engine

In the toolbar menu, select Applications, then select Application Configuration in the dropdown menu. The Application Configuration page will be displayed.

A table of phone numbers and associated applications will be displayed on this page. Go to the desired phone number and select Edit. Configuration options for that phone number will be displayed as shown in Figure 1 below.

Figure 1: Selecting the Nuance Vocalizer 7 TTS engine.

In the TTS engine dropdown menu, select Nuance Vocalizer 7.0. Make any additional selections as desired, then select Save.

List of languages

Available voices currently cover the following languages:

Language	Number of voices	Multilingual voices
American English (en-US)	9	2
British English (en-GB)	6	n/a
Spanish (es-ES)	4	1
German (de-DE)	5	1
Canadian French (fr-CA)	3	1
French (fr-FR)	3	1
Brazilian Portuguese (pt-BR)	3	n/a
Portuguese (pt-PT)	3	n/a
Cantonese (zh-HK)	2	2
Mandarin (zh-CN)	2	2

For more details on voices, see Vocalizer 7: <voice> tag and SSML Support.

SSML 1.0 support

Vocalizer supports the majority of the W3C specification SSML 1.0 for further VXML markup. See Vocalizer 7: <voice> tag and SSML Support for more information.

Recommended best practices

Avoid using xml:lang in <voice>

When setting the TTS language, avoid using the xml:lang attribute in the <voice> tag. Vocalizer 7 does not accept it. It will cause the TTS engine to use the default voice instead of the one specified.

Instead, use the xml:lang attribute of the <speak> or <vxml> tags.

Do this:

<speak> tag using the xml:lang attribute to specify British English:

<block>
    <prompt>
        <speak xml:lang="en-GB">
            <voice name="malcolm">
                Thank you for calling.
            </voice>
        </speak>
    </prompt>
</block>

<vxml> tag using the xml:lang attribute to specify British English:

<vxml version="2.1" xml:lang="en-GB">
    <form id="main">
        <block>
            <prompt>
                Thank you for calling.
            </prompt>
        </block>
    </form>
</vxml>

The above examples will use the voices and languages specified.

Don't do this:

Faulty method using xml:lang in the <voice> tag.

<block>
    <prompt>
        <voice name="malcolm" xml:lang="en-GB">
            Block 4.
        </voice>
    </prompt>
</block>

In the above example, Vocalizer would fail to accept the specified voice and would fall back to the default voice instead.

Note bargein effects on prompt queueing behavior

If bargein is enabled (i.e., <prompt bargein="true") in a series of prompts in a row, you may experience some delay before the first prompt starts playing. It has been reported that this behavior may be more apparent with Vocalizer 7 than with other TTS engines.

For more details on prompts and barge-in, see Audio Formats and Prompts.