Simon 2.0.0

Release Note for 2.0.0 - 3.28.2026 - Simon has been to updated to .NET10. There are also new voices as Microsoft introduced a new series of voices called Dragon HD. The new voices sound more natural. I am making a new video now using the new voices.

One thing to note, as sometimes the new Dragon voices ignore the pause. Other times they work.

Release Notes for 1.10.2 - 7.25.2025 - Microsoft.CognitiveServices.Speech was updated again, plus 3 other packages of mine

Release Notes for 1.10.0 - 5.28.2025 - Microsoft.CognitiveServices.Speech was updated.

There are now 95 voices.

Release Notes for 1.9.0 - 2.1.2025: Simon now has 93 voices.

Voice Luna has been added for United States and Singapore, these are two unique voices.

There are now 6 'Turbo' voices.

Alloy Turbo
Echo Turbo
Fable Turbo
Nova Turbo
Onyx Turbo
Shimmer Turbo

I question Microsoft calling these Turbo voices as they actually take 5 to 10 seconds longer.
To me they are Turtle voices, but it does give you additional voices so I left them in.

Microsoft.Cognitive.Services was updated to version 1.42.0.

-- Previous Release Notes

Release Notes for 1.8..0: Simon has been updated to .NET 9. There are now 87 voices.

Release Notes for 1.7.1 - Funny bug, I had a folder on C drive named Voices, and my filter stopped working because of that. Now the code checks between Debug Mode and Release Mode the proper way.

Release Notes for 1.7.0 - I upgraded Microsoft.CognitiveServices.Speech to version 1.40.0 and some of the voices seem a little better.

Release Notes for 1.6.1 - I upgraded Microsoft.CognitiveServices.Speech to version 1.37.0 and fixed a bug where Great Britain Voices weren't showing up, because of a search and replace typo had been used for Breat Britain, and the misspelling caused the voices not to load. Also Jenny Multi-Lingual Voice V2 is now just Jenny Multi-Lingual and original Jenny Voice Multi-Lingual has been replaced by the V2.
There are now 83 voices.

Release Notes for 1.6.0 - Simon was upgraded to .NET 8, and 4 new voices were added.

(History)

Release Notes for 1.5.0 - A New Feature Rate was added.

Rate can now be Extra Slow, Slow, Medium (default), Fast or Extra Fast.

Release Notes for 1.4.0 - A New Feature Pitch was added.

Pitch can now be Extra Low, Low, Medium (default), High or Extra High.

Release Notes 1.3.0 - A New Feature was added [SpellOut].

You can now spell out words

Note: I have found leaving a space works better than the Spell Out feature.
Instead, try this: I hate Mondays, I wish it was T G I F

Spell Out Examples (left in, but the example above works better).

Example: I hate Mondays, I wish it was [SpellOut.5] TGIF .

Testing [Pause1] [SpellOut.2] 1234 [Pause 1.5] Testing [Pause1] [SpellOut1] 1234 .

Note that the .5 is a half second pause after each character.

Release Notes: 1.2.0 - A new feature was added called Pause.

[Pause(duration)] where (duration) is replaced with the number of seconds.

Pause must be between .01 and 5 seconds. Values over 5 are converted to 5 according to the documentation I read.

Pause Examples
Hi, [Pause2] -- Will pause for 2 seconds

Today is the first day [Pause2.5], of the rest of your life.
I have not tested adding two or more pauses, but you might be able to combine [pause5][pause3] to pause for 8 seconds. I will try this some day or a brave volunteer can let me know if it works.

This install will install Simon on your machine. Simon is a text to speech app with 72 English language voices that use Microsoft Cognitive Service Text to Speech API. You can filter the voices by Gender and / or Country.

Here is a video that shows you how to install Simon and a demo.
https://youtu.be/T_muhqFGEPQ

You must create a free Microsoft Azure account, an Azure Resource Group and an Azure Speech Service account. I use the Free pricing tier, which provides 500,000 free characters per month. I believe the Standard Tier is $16 per 1 million characters if you need more.

After you setup Microsoft Azure, you must create two Environment Variables on your machine.

Name: SpeechKey
Enter your key for your Speech Service account.

Name: SpeechRegion
Value: Enter your region, such as centralus

Full instructions are located at *:
https://github.com/DataJuggler/Simon

Scroll down to see the instructions.

Upgrading?
You must uninstall the old version and install the new version for now.