say

This tool uses the Speech Synthesis manager to convert input text to audible speech and either play it through the sound output device chosen in System Preferences or save it to an AIFF file.

Documentation

• man 1 'say' [EN]

Syntax

 say [PARAMETER ...] [-f FILE|STRING ...]

Parameters

--data-format=FORMAT

The FORMAT of the audio data to be stored. Formats other than linear PCM are specified by giving their format identifiers (aac, alac). Linear PCM formats are specified as a sequence of:

Endianness (optional)

One of BE (big endian) or LE (little endian). Default is native endianness.

Data type

One of F (float), I (integer), or, rarely, UI (unsigned integer).

Sample size

One of 8, 16, 24, 32, 64.

Most available file formats only support a subset of these sample formats.

To obtain a list of audio data formats for a file format specified explicitly or by file name, specify ? as the format name.

The format identifier optionally can be followed by @SAMPLERATE and /HEXFLAGS for the format.

-f FILE, --input-file=FILE

Specify a FILE to be spoken. If file is - or neither this parameter nor a message is specified, read from standard input.

-o FILE, --output-file=FILE

Specify the path for an audio file to be written. AIFF is the default and should be supported for most voices, but some voices support many more file formats.

--progress

Display a progress meter during synthesis.

-v VOICE, --voice=VOICE

Specify the VOICE to be used. Default is the voice selected in System Preferences. To obtain a list of voices installed in the system, specify ? as the voice name.

Examples

Get Alex's voice

say --voice='Alex' 'Hello World!'

Create a WAVE output file

say --voice='Alex' --output-file="${HOME}/tmp/alex.wav" \
   --data-format='LEF32@8000' 'Hello World!'