Skip to main content

Upgrade to Text-to-Speech Neural Voice  by 31 August 2024

Published date: August 17, 2021

Text-to-Speech currently supports both standard and neural voices. However, since the neural voices provide more natural sounding speech output, and thus, a better end-user experience, we are retiring the standard voices on 31st August 2024 and they will no longer be supported after that date.  
 

Here is a quick comparison between Standard Text-to-Speech and Neural Text-to-Speech features: 

Standard text-to-speech 

Neural text-to-speech 

Noticeably robotic 

Natural sounding, closer to human-parity 

Limited capabilities in voice tuning 

Advanced capabilities in voice tuning  

No new investment in future voice fonts 

On-going investment in future voice fonts 

 

Action required   

  1. Review the price structure and listen to the neural voice samples to determine the right voice for your business needs.    

  1. To make the change, follow the steps to update the voice name in your speech synthesis request to the supported neural voice names in chosen languages by 31 August 2024. Starting 1st September 2024, standard voices will no longer be supported, please use neural voices for your speech synthesis request, on cloud or on prem.     

Help and support 

If you have questions, get answers from community experts in Microsoft Q&A. If you have a support plan and you need technical help, create a support request.   

  • Azure AI Speech
  • Retirements