Acapela TTS alternative: voice files without a licence deal
Acapela Group is a long-standing maker of text-to-speech voices. Its voices speak in apps, transport announcements, screen readers and communication devices, and many people met them through the Acapela demo or the Acapela Box site for making voice files.
If what you need is a voice file for a video, a game, an announcement or a lesson, there is a simpler route. This guide explains what Acapela offers, when it is the right choice, and how to get natural voice files from SuperClonica for free or once-off prices.
What Acapela offers
According to its site, Acapela speaks over 30 languages and sells voices to businesses through SDKs for Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android and embedded devices and through a cloud API. It also builds custom brand voices, offers My-Own-Voice for people who want to preserve their voice, has children’s voices, and provides voices for Google Play and for the NVDA screen reader. Prices are given on request.
When Acapela is the right choice
Choose Acapela when a device or app already uses its voices, when you need a licensed voice inside your own product with vendor support, or for communication aids and voice preservation, where it works with assistive-technology makers. SuperClonica is not a medical or AAC product.
A voice file for a project
For a recording rather than a licence, open any voice in the SuperClonica catalog, type 30 to 100 characters and download the result free, with no account. For whole texts install the free engine with python -m pip install superclonica-cpu and run superclonica --text-file text.txt --voice F2 --lang en --output text.mp3 offline with no character limit. The ten stock voices are free under the OpenRAIL-M licence, so the files can be used in published work.
Voices in 31 languages, and your own
Every SuperClonica voice speaks 31 languages. The catalog adds narrators and character voices for $2.99 once or free, and the studio trains a voice from a clean 5 to 10 second recording on a computer with an NVIDIA RTX 20-series or newer or GTX 16 card; without one, order the voice on the exchange.