Generate mp3 file from espeak

Question

I'd like to convert an text file to an mp3 file using espeak. Is it possible to do this? I'm trying to use espeak to create a song synthesis shell script that can convert text to a song.

Answer 1

There's two ways of doing this; if you just want a wav file, see the first example, and for an mp3 conversion see the second.

1) Feed espeak your text file using the -f option, then use the --stdout option and redirect its data stream to file to create a valid wav file that plays correctly in any audio player.

espeak -f mytext --stdout > myaudio

Result checked with the file command (file myaudio):

myaudio: RIFF (little-endian) data, WAVE audio, Microsoft PCM, 16 bit, mono 22050 Hz

2) If you want an mp3 conversion you will have to use a program to convert your file (or simply save it in audacity and export it as mp3). I have used ffmpeg (the git version), but you can use any program and just change the options:

espeak -f myfile --stdout | ffmpeg -i - -ar 44100 -ac 2 -ab 192k -f mp3 final.mp3

Result checked with file final.mp3:

final.mp3: Audio file with ID3 version 2.4.0, contains: MPEG ADTS, layer III, v1, 192 kbps, 44.1 kHz, Stereo

Answer 2

I actually wrote a script achieving this... and it ended up working quite well.

https://github.com/divVerent/ecantorix

Example: https://github.com/downloads/divVerent/ecantorix/sarastro.ogg

Answer 3

espeak now has a -w option which outputs to wav
(It still would need to be converted to mp3 afterwards.)

espeak -f foo.txt -w foo.wav

Answer 4

The --stdout option to espeak will tell it to write the audio data to stdout instead of putting it through the audio device. From there you can pipe it into e.g. ffmpeg for conversion to the proper format.