System.Speech not working on deployment

Brian Campbell 6

I am using .NET 6 for a Desktop application under Windows 10 and have installed the System.Speech NuGet package. I am using the System.Speech.Synthesis library. It works fine within the Visual Studio IDE (compiled for Debug and Release) but as soon as I created an installer using the Microsoft Setup extension and install the program on exactly the same machine as running the IDE, I get an Exception: -

System.PlatformNotSupportedException: Speech is not supported on this platform.

Under the IDE, everything works fine - no crashes and I can hear the speech. Stand-alone the application causes an exception on creating an instance of the System.Speech.Synthesis.SpeechSynthesizer object.

Because it works fine under the IDE, I can't use it to do any pinpointing of the problem.

I have repeated this on three totally different computers all with the same results. It does not appear to be a configuration issue with one machine.

Jiachen Li-MSFT 32,951 Reputation points Microsoft Vendor

2022-10-12T01:36:47.17+00:00

Hi @Brian Campbell ,
Try to install the Microsoft Speech Platform - Runtime Languages SDK, add a reference, and change your namespace to Microsoft.Speech (instead of System.Speech).
Brian Campbell 6 Reputation points

2022-10-12T02:43:59.503+00:00

Thanks. I tried something similar before without success.

The SDK seems to have installed okay and shows up in the Aps & features page of the Windows Settings. When you say "add a reference", how? I assume you are referring to the Dependencies entry in the project. What am I looking for?

I think I have everything installed. I have the runtime and SDK for x64 and x86 as well as the en-AU language pack. I can't seem to get any documentation. I downloaded the .chm file but it just has the topics but won't display any content, When I click on links from the website that seem to go to documentation, all I get is the Bing search window. The URL seems to be looking for something like bing.com/?ref=go&linkid=224075 but get nothing but a search window with a lot of clutter underneath that seems totally unrelated.

I still don't get why System.Speech works in the IDE but not standalone. I can only assume the IDE is loading a library that, if I could get the standalone version to load, would make it work.

I only need very simple text to speech capability. The system for our shop has a stocktake function that allows us to walk away from the PC with a wireless barcode scanner to log items in. If something goes wrong, all I want to do is speak a very short message so you don't have to go back to the PC to read a dialog box. Simplicity and speed are far more important than speech quality.
Jiachen Li-MSFT 32,951 Reputation points Microsoft Vendor

2022-10-12T05:54:29.36+00:00

Hi @Brian Campbell ,
Install Microsoft Speech Platform - Software Development Kit (SDK) (Version 11) and you will find its assembly in "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Speech\v11.0\Assembly\Microsoft.Speech.dll".
In Visual Studio, Project ->Add a reference ->Browser to add it as a reference.
Brian Campbell 6 Reputation points

2022-10-13T03:26:43.49+00:00

I added the reference. After changing System.Speech.Synthesis to Microsoft.Speech.Synthesis in the source, everything compiled okay. For some reason, my image resources for toolbar buttons got totally screwed up but I managed to fix that - probably unrelated.

Anyway, when the standalone version was installed, instead of getting the exception that speech was not supported, I got the exception the Microsoft.Speech.dll could not be found.

I added Microsoft.Speech.dll to the Application Folder of the setup project. This time, the program ran without throwing an exception. The only problem is that there was no speech at all - it was silent. I repeated this test with both the 32 and 64 bit versions. No difference.

I went back to the IDE and ran the program in Debug. Silence. I changed Microsoft.Speech.Synthesis back to System.Speech.Synthesis with no other changes. Speech was restored.

I created a brand new separate solution containing just a text box and button to repeat the speech test without any chance of some outside confounding influence. System.Speech.Synthesis worked. Microsoft.Speech.Synthesis was silent.

Brian Campbell 6

namespace Speech_Test;

public partial class Form1 : Form
{
private Microsoft.Speech.Synthesis.SpeechSynthesizer _synth = new();

public Form1()  
{  
    InitializeComponent();  
}  

private void Form1_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)  
{  
    _synth.Rate = 1;  
    _synth.Volume = 100;  
}  

private void bnClose_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)  
{  
    Close();  
}  

private void bnSay_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)  
{  
    _synth.SpeakAsync(tbMessage.Text);  
}

}

Brian Campbell 6 Reputation points

2022-10-18T01:57:01.48+00:00

I'm starting to get somewhere identifying the cause, but sadly not the fix.

First, I've given up on Microsoft.Speech. I get nothing but silence no matter what I do.

I can alter the behaviour of System.Speech depending on the installation package I use. It seems that the installer that fails is missing the inclusion of a DLL.

If I use the Click Once function within Visual Studio, it works. Unfortunately, it does not put the program in Program Files or Program Files (x86) where it belongs. If I use the Microsoft Installer Project extension, the program is installed in Program Files (x86) but fails when creating the System.Speech.SpeechSynthesizer object.

I compared the files produced by the installation files of the version that worked and the version that didn't and noticed two different versions of System.Speech.dll in the one that worked. They have almost identical timestamps (23 Oct 2021 at 10:48 and 10:49) but one is more than double the size of the other (648K vs 301K). I opened the 648K version and viewed the version.txt file within it to see "Internal implementation package not meant for direct consumption. Please do not reference directly. Provides types to perform speech synthesis and speech recognition."

It does appear that in spite of having the same name, both are required. Could it be that the Microsoft Installer Project extension is not including this second and larger file?
Noah Anleitner 1 Reputation point

2022-11-16T14:21:46.127+00:00

Did you manage to get it to work? I have the same problem. But for me, it doesnt work in Debug as well.
Brian Campbell 6 Reputation points

2022-11-16T23:39:36.077+00:00

No. I tried everything suggested and scoured the internet for other solutions to no avail.
Noah Anleitner 1 Reputation point

2022-11-22T11:54:46.463+00:00

Which Version of System.Speech do you use?

For me on .net5 I needed to use Version 5.0.0.

If you are using Version 7 and using .net6, maybe try using Version 6. if this doesnt work either, try Version 5 as well
Brian Campbell 6 Reputation points

2022-12-04T01:49:46.337+00:00

NET6 and Version 6 of System.Speech

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matthe wadam 1 Reputation point

2022-11-28T09:18:27.913+00:00

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