Set up a professional voice

Set up your professional voice before you add voice talent consent and training data.

Prerequisites

• Approved access to professional voice. Review the limited-access requirements and request access if needed.
• For Foundry (new), an Azure subscription and a Foundry project associated with a Standard (S0) resource. See Create a Microsoft Foundry project.
• For Foundry (new), permission to use the project and manage Speech data, models, and deployments. Ask your administrator to review Foundry access permissions and Speech resource permissions.
• A supported language and a resource in a supported training region. In the Text to speech regions table, check Custom voice training and its footnotes.
• Written permission from the voice talent and a recording of their consent statement. Share the disclosure for voice talent with them before recording.
• Audio recordings and, when required by your data type, matching transcripts. Training eligibility depends on the selected training method and version, not a single minimum that applies to every model.

Start professional voice setup

Foundry (new)

To start a professional voice customization in the new Microsoft Foundry portal, follow these steps:

Tip

To start from Build, select Services > Customizations. This tab lists your draft customizations and trained models. Select Create, and then complete Basic details in this procedure.

1. Sign in to Microsoft Foundry. Make sure the New Foundry toggle is on. These steps refer to Foundry (new).

   

2. Open the Foundry project associated with the resource you want to use for professional voice.

3. Select Discover.

4. On Overview, under Experiment with prebuilt services, select Azure Speech.

5. On the Services page, under Customize, select Professional voice to open the Customize a model page.

   

6. On the Basic details step, fill in these settings:

   • Select model: Select Azure Speech - Text to Speech if it isn't already selected.
   • Type: Select Professional voice if it isn't already selected.
   • Voice gender: Select the gender of the voice talent.
   • Training data language: Select the language of your training data.
   • Voice name: Enter a name for your voice model.
   • Description: Optionally enter a description.

7. Select Next.

Keep the Customize a model page open and continue with Add voice talent consent to register the voice talent.

Resume an unfinished customization

If you leave the wizard before submitting training, return to your existing draft:

1. Open the same Foundry project.

2. Select Build > Services > Customizations.

3. Select the name of your customization with the Draft status to reopen Customize a model.

   

4. Review the saved settings and continue to the step you need.

Foundry (classic)

In the Microsoft Foundry (classic) portal, you can fine-tune some Foundry Tools models. To fine-tune a professional voice model, follow these steps:

1. Go to your Microsoft Foundry project in the Microsoft Foundry (classic) portal. If you need to create a project, see Create a Microsoft Foundry project.

2. Select Fine-tuning from the left pane.

3. Select AI Service fine-tuning > + Fine-tune.

   

4. In the wizard, select Custom voice (professional voice fine-tuning).

5. Select Next.

6. Follow the instructions provided by the wizard to create your fine-tuning workspace.

Continue professional voice setup

Use the following Azure Speech in Foundry Tools articles to continue setting up your professional voice:

• Add voice talent consent
• Add training datasets
• Train your voice model
• Deploy your professional voice model as an endpoint

View professional voice models

Foundry (new)

After training finishes, access your custom voice models and deployments from the Customizations tab.

1. Sign in to Microsoft Foundry. Make sure the New Foundry toggle is on. These steps refer to Foundry (new).
2. Select Build from the upper-right menu.
3. Select Services in the left pane.
4. Select the Customizations tab to view the status of your customization jobs and the models that were created.
5. Select a model name to open the model details page, where you can view training status and manage deployments.

To test your voice in the playground, first deploy the model and wait for the deployment status to become Succeeded.

Foundry (classic)

1. Sign in to the Microsoft Foundry (classic) portal.

2. Select Fine-tuning from the left pane.

3. Select AI Service fine-tuning. You can view the status of your fine-tuning tasks and the models that were created.

   

Next step

Add voice talent consent for professional voice.

Content for custom voice like data, models, tests, and endpoints are organized into projects in Speech Studio. Each project is specific to a country/region and language, and the gender of the voice you want to create. For example, you might create a project for a female voice for your call center's chat bots that use English in the United States.

All it takes to get started are a handful of audio files and the associated transcriptions. See if custom voice supports your language and region.

Start fine-tuning

To fine-tune a professional voice model, follow these steps:

1. Sign in to the Speech Studio.

2. Select the subscription and Speech resource to work with.

   Important

   Custom voice training is currently only available in some regions. After your voice model is trained in a supported region, you can copy it to a Speech resource in another region as needed. See footnotes in the regions table for more information.

3. Select Custom voice > Create a project.

4. Select Custom neural voice Pro > Next.

5. Follow the instructions provided by the wizard to create your project.

Select the new project by name or select Go to project. You see these menu items in the left panel: Set up voice talent, Prepare training data, Train model, and Deploy model.

Next steps

Add voice talent consent to the professional voice project.

Professional voice projects contain the voice talent consent statement, training datasets, voice models, and endpoints.

Each project is specific to a country/region and language, and the gender of the voice you want to create. For example, you might create a project for a female voice for your call center's chat bots that use English in the United States.

Create a project

To create a professional voice project, use the Projects_Create operation of the custom voice API. Construct the request body according to the following instructions:

• Set the required kind property to ProfessionalVoice. The kind can't be changed later.
• Optionally, set the locale property. The locale of this project. The locale code follows BCP-47. You can find the text to speech locale list here. If you provide the locale, the project is usable in Speech Studio.
• Optionally, set the description property for the project description. The project description can be changed later.

Make an HTTP PUT request using the URI as shown in the following Projects_Create example.

• Replace YourResourceKey with your Speech resource key.
• Replace YourResourceName with your Speech resource name.
• Replace ProjectId with a project ID of your choice. The case sensitive ID must be unique within your Speech resource. The ID will be used in the project's URI and can't be changed later.

curl -v -X PUT -H "Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key: YourResourceKey" -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{
  "description": "Project description",
  "kind": "ProfessionalVoice",
  "locale": "en-US"
} '  "https://YourResourceName.cognitiveservices.azure.com/customvoice/projects/ProjectId?api-version=2026-01-01"

You should receive a response body in the following format:

{
  "id": "ProjectId",
  "description": "Project description",
  "kind": "ProfessionalVoice",
  "locale": "en-US",
  "createdDateTime": "2023-04-01T05:30:00.000Z"
}

You use the project id in subsequent API requests to add voice talent consent and create a training set.

Next steps

Add voice talent consent to the professional voice project.