Monologue synthesizer

This add-on adds the First Byte Monologue (ProVoice, 22 kHz male voice) speech synthesizer to NVDA. It runs the original 16-bit Windows 3.1 speech code — the engine FB_SPCH.DLL, the speech task FB_NGN.EXE, the timing helper FB_TIMER.DLL and the FB_22K16 voice tables — inside the Unicorn CPU emulator, capturing the audio the engine would have sent to the sound card and handing it to NVDA.

32-bit and 64-bit NVDA

Because the 16-bit engine is emulated rather than loaded natively (64-bit Windows cannot load 16-bit code at all), the add-on runs in both 32-bit and 64-bit NVDA. The correct unicorn.dll for the running NVDA is selected automatically at start-up.

Voices

Two voices are available in NVDA's Voice settings:

• Monologue (ProVoice 22 kHz, male) – the higher-quality 16-bit voice.
• Monologue (ProVoice 11 kHz, male) – the older, grainier 8-bit voice (upsampled to the common output rate).

Settings

Rate, Pitch and Volume are standard NVDA 0–100 sliders (mapped internally to the engine's own 0–9 range). The engine's top speaking speed is modest by modern screen-reader standards.

Notes

Synthesis runs a few times faster than real time and streams as it is produced, so speech starts promptly. The engine pads each utterance with trailing silence; the add-on trims it so navigation stays responsive.

Credits

Monologue / ProVoice / SmoothTalker speech engine © First Byte. Emulation via the Unicorn Engine. This add-on packages the original engine for use with NVDA.