Microsoft Speech SDK 5.1

Microsoft Speech Software Development Kit (SDK) is a set of software codes that allows you to build speech applications for Windows. It is the combination of the Speech Application Programming Interface (SAPI) that can recognize human voice, and the Text-to-Speech (TTS) Engine that can convert written text to audio.

This API (Application Programming Interface) is really easy to use, if you know some programming. This package is also friendly to new ones as it comes with a set of sample projects that you can study. I have been successful in creating a text-to-speech program in Visual Basic within minutes. The sample codes are given in Visual Basic, C++, C Sharp, and DHTML. You need to have a licensed copy of Visual Studio 6.0 to access these tutorials. It also installs a CHM help file that clearly explains all the programming methods and parameters of this API.

If you have been using Visual Studio, you know how easy it is to type functions using IntelliSense, since it shows all the valid commands in a drop-down list while you are editing. Sadly, this auto-complete feature doesn't work with the TTS engine. Even though designed for Visual Studio 6.0, Microsoft Speech SDK is still a great tool for speech programming.