I'm working on an application where we want to try a robot voice for user interactions instead of the current Speech Services standard voices.
That would make the application more exciting since our bot will be talking to kids.
The application shall be speaking Brazil Portuguese. Questions:
Is there a built-in language model that would accomplish that for pt-BR?
If not would it be possible to customize the standard voice via SSML or C#?
Suggestions are also welcome!
You can look into using espeak for generating a robot-sounding voice. You can also do it in SSML using the "range" parameter with the prosody element. Currently only Microsoft (Azure cloud, SAPI5 and WinRT's Windows.Media.Speech) engines support the "range" attribute.
Example:
<speak version="1.0" xml:lang="pt-BR">
<prosody pitch="x-low" range="-100%">All your base are belong to us</prosody>
</speak>