Use multiple voices in text to speech narration

Make your voiceovers more interesting for listeners by including several voices. This can break the monotony, and help you create interesting dialogues, text to speech radio ads, or interviews easily.

There is no need to record the script for each voice separately and then stitch up different parts. With Narakeet, you can easily use multiple voices in the same script.

Use the voice stage direction to switch to a new voice

You can easily change the active text to speech reader by including a voice stage direction. Just start a new line with the word “voice” in brackets, add a colon and then specify the voice that should continue reading.

Stage directions only work if they are in a separate paragraph, so make sure to leave at least one blank line between the stage direction and the text.

For example, the following script starts with the primary voice chosen for the audio file, but then switches to Victoria for the second part.

To understand this topic better, we've invited our resident financial expert, Victoria. Victoria, what do you think about this problem?

(voice: Victoria)

That's a very complex issue, of course. I think people should be cautious and ensure they do not take on risks unnecessarily.

By the way, there are lots of other stage directions you can use to control different aspects of the text to speech synthesis.

Switch to a new language or accent by selecting a native text to speech generator

You can also use this trick to switch to a completely new language. For example, the script below will switch to French by using Celine, a French speaking voice.

(voice: Charles)

Hello, it's so nice of you to join us.

(voice: Celine)

Ravi de vous rencontrer.

Switch back to the original voice, or alternate between voices

The voice stage direction applies to all the text that follows it, not just to a single paragraph. You can use it as many times as you like in the script, to switch to a different reader. This can be very useful for interviews, or for language lessons. For example, the following script will switch alternatively between Matt, who reads English, and Celine, who reads French.

(voice: Matt)

House

(voice: Celine)

La maison

(voice: Matt)

Dog

(voice: Celine)

Le chien

(voice: Matt)

Cat

(voice: Celine)

Le chat

Normalize voice volume

When using several text to speech voices in the same scene or script, it is usually a good idea to normalize the voice volume, so that the audio sounds consistent. Narakeet makes it easy to normalize the volume of realistic text to speech voices. Check out our lesson on How to normalize voice over volume for more information.