Azure AI Speech, Text-to-Speech

Generate narration with Azure neural TTS, high-quality multilingual voices, SSML prosody control, and express-as styles, served synchronously by the REST /cognitiveservices/v1 endpoint (no token exchange, Blob storage, or job polling). In OpenMontage this is exposed through the azure_tts tool (capability=tts, provider=azure). It is an optional cloud TTS provider, when AZURE_SPEECH_KEY is configured, prefer it for high-quality cloud narration. The local piper_tts remains the default offline path and the fallback when Azure is unavailable; elevenlabs_tts remains the choice for voice cloning.

Docs: REST text to speech · Voice gallery

Setup

Same Speech resource as azure_stt, one key/region unlocks both directions (STT and TTS). Create a Speech resource in the Azure portal; copy the key and region from its Keys and Endpoint page.

export AZURE_SPEECH_KEY=your_speech_resource_key
export AZURE_SPEECH_REGION=eastus        # your resource's region
# export AZURE_TTS_ENDPOINT=https://...  # optional: full custom TTS host
#   (the TTS host is https://<region>.tts.speech.microsoft.com, a different
#    subdomain than the STT endpoint, hence the separate override var)

azure_tts reports AVAILABLE once AZURE_SPEECH_KEY plus either AZURE_SPEECH_REGION or AZURE_TTS_ENDPOINT are set.

Using it in a pipeline

Route through tts_selector as usual (it auto-discovers azure_tts), or call the provider tool directly when the user has approved Azure:

from tools.tool_registry import registry
registry.discover()
tts = registry._tools["azure_tts"]