Migrate from prebuilt standard voice to prebuilt neural voice

Important

We are retiring the standard voices from September 1, 2021 through August 31, 2024. Speech resources created after September 1, 2021 could never use standard voices. We are gradually sunsetting standard voice support for Speech resources created prior to September 1, 2021. By August 31, 2024 the standard voices won’t be available for all customers. You can choose from the supported neural voice names.

The pricing for prebuilt standard voice is different from prebuilt neural voice. Go to the pricing page and check the pricing details in the collapsable "Deprecated" section. Prebuilt standard voice (retired) is referred as Standard.

The prebuilt neural voice provides more natural sounding speech output, and thus, a better end-user experience.

Prebuilt standard voice Prebuilt neural voice
Noticeably robotic Natural sounding, closer to human-parity
Limited capabilities in voice tuning1 Advanced capabilities in voice tuning 
No new investment in future voice fonts On-going investment in future voice fonts

1 For voice tuning, volume and pitch changes can be applied to standard voices at the word or sentence-level, whereas they can only be applied to neural voices at the sentence level. Duration supports standard voices only. To learn more about details on prosody elements, see Improve synthesis with SSML.

Action required

Tip

Even without an Azure account, you can listen to voice samples at the Voice Gallery and determine the right voice for your business needs.

  1. Review the price structure.
  2. To make the change, follow the sample code to update the voice name in your speech synthesis request to the supported neural voice names in chosen languages. Use neural voices for your speech synthesis request, on cloud or on prem. For on-premises container, use the neural voice containers and follow the instructions.

Standard voice details (deprecated)

Read the following sections for details on standard voice.

Language support

More than 75 prebuilt standard voices are available in over 45 languages and locales, which allow you to convert text into synthesized speech.

Note

With two exceptions, standard voices are created from samples that use a 16 khz sample rate. The en-US-AriaRUS and en-US-GuyRUS voices are also created from samples that use a 24 khz sample rate. All voices can upsample or downsample to other sample rates when synthesizing.

Language Locale (BCP-47) Gender Voice name
Arabic (Arabic ) ar-EG Female ar-EG-Hoda
Arabic (Saudi Arabia) ar-SA Male ar-SA-Naayf
Bulgarian (Bulgaria) bg-BG Male bg-BG-Ivan
Catalan ca-ES Female ca-ES-HerenaRUS
Chinese (Cantonese, Traditional) zh-HK Male zh-HK-Danny
Chinese (Cantonese, Traditional) zh-HK Female zh-HK-TracyRUS
Chinese (Mandarin, Simplified) zh-CN Female zh-CN-HuihuiRUS
Chinese (Mandarin, Simplified) zh-CN Male zh-CN-Kangkang
Chinese (Mandarin, Simplified) zh-CN Female zh-CN-Yaoyao
Chinese (Taiwanese Mandarin) zh-TW Female zh-TW-HanHanRUS
Chinese (Taiwanese Mandarin) zh-TW Female zh-TW-Yating
Chinese (Taiwanese Mandarin) zh-TW Male zh-TW-Zhiwei
Croatian (Croatia) hr-HR Male hr-HR-Matej
Czech (Czech Republic) cs-CZ Male cs-CZ-Jakub
Danish (Denmark) da-DK Female da-DK-HelleRUS
Dutch (Netherlands) nl-NL Female nl-NL-HannaRUS
English (Australia) en-AU Female en-AU-Catherine
English (Australia) en-AU Female en-AU-HayleyRUS
English (Canada) en-CA Female en-CA-HeatherRUS
English (Canada) en-CA Female en-CA-Linda
English (India) en-IN Female en-IN-Heera
English (India) en-IN Female en-IN-PriyaRUS
English (India) en-IN Male en-IN-Ravi
English (Ireland) en-IE Male en-IE-Sean
English (United Kingdom) en-GB Male en-GB-George
English (United Kingdom) en-GB Female en-GB-HazelRUS
English (United Kingdom) en-GB Female en-GB-Susan
English (United States) en-US Male en-US-BenjaminRUS
English (United States) en-US Male en-US-GuyRUS
English (United States) en-US Female en-US-AriaRUS
English (United States) en-US Female en-US-ZiraRUS
Finnish (Finland) fi-FI Female fi-FI-HeidiRUS
French (Canada) fr-CA Female fr-CA-Caroline
French (Canada) fr-CA Female fr-CA-HarmonieRUS
French (France) fr-FR Female fr-FR-HortenseRUS
French (France) fr-FR Female fr-FR-Julie
French (France) fr-FR Male fr-FR-Paul
French (Switzerland) fr-CH Male fr-CH-Guillaume
German (Austria) de-AT Male de-AT-Michael
German (Germany) de-DE Female de-DE-HeddaRUS
German (Germany) de-DE Male de-DE-Stefan
German (Switzerland) de-CH Male de-CH-Karsten
Greek (Greece) el-GR Male el-GR-Stefanos
Hebrew (Israel) he-IL Male he-IL-Asaf
Hindi (India) hi-IN Male hi-IN-Hemant
Hindi (India) hi-IN Female hi-IN-Kalpana
Hungarian (Hungary) hu-HU Male hu-HU-Szabolcs
Indonesian (Indonesia) id-ID Male id-ID-Andika
Italian (Italy) it-IT Male it-IT-Cosimo
Italian (Italy) it-IT Female it-IT-LuciaRUS
Japanese (Japan) ja-JP Female ja-JP-Ayumi
Japanese (Japan) ja-JP Female ja-JP-HarukaRUS
Japanese (Japan) ja-JP Male ja-JP-Ichiro
Korean (Korea) ko-KR Female ko-KR-HeamiRUS
Malay (Malaysia) ms-MY Male ms-MY-Rizwan
Norwegian (Bokmål, Norway) nb-NO Female nb-NO-HuldaRUS
Polish (Poland) pl-PL Female pl-PL-PaulinaRUS
Portuguese (Brazil) pt-BR Male pt-BR-Daniel
Portuguese (Brazil) pt-BR Female pt-BR-HeloisaRUS
Portuguese (Portugal) pt-PT Female pt-PT-HeliaRUS
Romanian (Romania) ro-RO Male ro-RO-Andrei
Russian (Russia) ru-RU Female ru-RU-EkaterinaRUS
Russian (Russia) ru-RU Female ru-RU-Irina
Russian (Russia) ru-RU Male ru-RU-Pavel
Slovak (Slovakia) sk-SK Male sk-SK-Filip
Slovenian (Slovenia) sl-SI Male sl-SI-Lado
Spanish (Mexico) es-MX Female es-MX-HildaRUS
Spanish (Mexico) es-MX Male es-MX-Raul
Spanish (Spain) es-ES Female es-ES-HelenaRUS
Spanish (Spain) es-ES Female es-ES-Laura
Spanish (Spain) es-ES Male es-ES-Pablo
Swedish (Sweden) sv-SE Female sv-SE-HedvigRUS
Tamil (India) ta-IN Male ta-IN-Valluvar
Telugu (India) te-IN Female te-IN-Chitra
Thai (Thailand) th-TH Male th-TH-Pattara
Turkish (Türkiye) tr-TR Female tr-TR-SedaRUS
Vietnamese (Vietnam) vi-VN Male vi-VN-An

Important

The en-US-Jessa voice has changed to en-US-Aria. If you were using "Jessa" before, convert over to "Aria".

You can continue to use the full service name mapping like "Microsoft Server Speech Text to Speech Voice (en-US, AriaRUS)" in your speech synthesis requests.

Regional support

Use this table to determine availability of standard voices by region/endpoint:

Region Endpoint
Australia East https://australiaeast.tts.speech.microsoft.com/cognitiveservices/v1
Brazil South https://brazilsouth.tts.speech.microsoft.com/cognitiveservices/v1
Canada Central https://canadacentral.tts.speech.microsoft.com/cognitiveservices/v1
Central US https://centralus.tts.speech.microsoft.com/cognitiveservices/v1
East Asia https://eastasia.tts.speech.microsoft.com/cognitiveservices/v1
East US https://eastus.tts.speech.microsoft.com/cognitiveservices/v1
East US 2 https://eastus2.tts.speech.microsoft.com/cognitiveservices/v1
France Central https://francecentral.tts.speech.microsoft.com/cognitiveservices/v1
India Central https://centralindia.tts.speech.microsoft.com/cognitiveservices/v1
Japan East https://japaneast.tts.speech.microsoft.com/cognitiveservices/v1
Japan West https://japanwest.tts.speech.microsoft.com/cognitiveservices/v1
Korea Central https://koreacentral.tts.speech.microsoft.com/cognitiveservices/v1
North Central US https://northcentralus.tts.speech.microsoft.com/cognitiveservices/v1
North Europe https://northeurope.tts.speech.microsoft.com/cognitiveservices/v1
South Central US https://southcentralus.tts.speech.microsoft.com/cognitiveservices/v1
Southeast Asia https://southeastasia.tts.speech.microsoft.com/cognitiveservices/v1
UK South https://uksouth.tts.speech.microsoft.com/cognitiveservices/v1
West Central US https://westcentralus.tts.speech.microsoft.com/cognitiveservices/v1
West Europe https://westeurope.tts.speech.microsoft.com/cognitiveservices/v1
West US https://westus.tts.speech.microsoft.com/cognitiveservices/v1
West US 2 https://westus2.tts.speech.microsoft.com/cognitiveservices/v1

Next steps