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Azure AI Speech

Azure AI Speech
Formerly Azure Cognitive Speech Services

Overview

What is Azure AI Speech?

The Azure AI Speech service provides a range of speech recognition and generation capabilities including speech transcription, text-to-speech and speech translation. It provides a range of speech recognition and generation capabilities including speech transcription, text-to-speech, speech translation, and speaker recognition.

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Recent Reviews
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

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Pricing

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Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://azure.microsoft.com/en…

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Starting price (does not include set up fee)

  • $1 per month
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Product Details

What is Azure AI Speech?

The Speech service is the unification of speech-to-text, text-to-speech, and speech-translation into a single Azure subscription. It's speech capabilities enable applications, tools, and devices with the Speech CLI, Speech SDK, Speech Devices SDK, Speech Studio, or REST APIs.

Services include:

Speech to Text - Transcribe audio in more than 92 languages and variants. Gain customer insights with call center transcription, improve experiences with voice-enabled assistants, and capture key discussions in meetings.

Text to Speech - Create apps and services that speak conversationally, choosing from more than 215 voices, and 60 languages and variants. Create natural-sounding audio content, improve accessibility with read-aloud functionality, and create custom voice assistants.

Speech Translation - Translate audio from more than 30 languages and customize translations for organization's specific terms in a preferred programming language.

Speaker Recognition - Confirm a person's identity or recognize who's speaking in a meeting by adding speaker verification and identification to an app.

Custom Commands - Users can build a touchless, voice-first experience to improve safety and support back-to-work scenarios.

Custom Keywords - Custom keyword for IoT devices and voice-enabled assistants to set your brand apart—making it more personal, personable, and secure.

Azure AI Speech Technical Details

Deployment TypesSoftware as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

The Azure AI Speech service provides a range of speech recognition and generation capabilities including speech transcription, text-to-speech and speech translation. It provides a range of speech recognition and generation capabilities including speech transcription, text-to-speech, speech translation, and speaker recognition.

Azure AI Speech starts at $1.

The most common users of Azure AI Speech are from Enterprises (1,001+ employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(16)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-2 of 2)
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March 29, 2022

A solid service provided by Microsoft which has some room for minor improvements. Definitely one of the top service in this market and well worth considering

Verified User
Employee in Information Technology
Education Management Company, 1001-5000 employees
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
There are two main uses for this product within our organisation as of yet, firstly: we use the accurate voice analysis with custom speech models in lectures to ensure our lectures are accessible to students with hearing-related accessibility issues, mostly through live text translation. Secondly, students are able to use this service and integrate its functionality into their application development during projects within their computing degrees.
Pros and Cons
  • It implements accurate voice analysis which can be improved with customised speech models
  • Affordable
  • Doesn't have to be run online/ can be run and stored locally
  • It can be quite difficult to set up
  • Speech recognition is occasionally inaccurate
  • It sometimes struggles with non-native English speakers' accents
Likelihood to Recommend
This service is well suited for scenarios where you need to integrate text-to-speech and/or speech-to-text into applications. Within our organisation, it is primarily used by students for development purposes to enable said functionality but is also used to provide accessibility to students who have hearing-related issues. Its multi-language support is also beneficial for our international students who have English as a second language and are therefore able to rapidly translate any text or speech that they do not understand.
Most Important Features
  • Accurate speech detection and transcription
  • Live speech detection functionality
  • Easy deployment
Return on Investment
  • Increased accessibility of our lectures for students
  • Reduced the time required by lectures to introduce CC captions to remote lectures during the COVID-19 pandemic
Alternatives Considered
Having used both this service and IBM Watson's Text to Speech, I can safely say that IBM's product comes out on top but this is a close call as both products are very good in their own right. That being said, this Azure service lacks some of the extra functionality that can be found in other products such as broader multi-language support. This product is also more costly than some other alternatives which is a con in my opinion. Azure does, however, come out on top in regards to customer support and general support of the product as it is supported by Microsoft which also means that it integrates well with other parts of the Microsoft suite.
Other Software Used
March 17, 2022

Enables our users to have more natural-feeling conversations with chatbots

Verified User
Analyst in Information Technology
Utilities Company, 10,001+ employees
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
We have been using chatbots within our organisation for several years. Our users have been asking whether it is possible to have a simulated 'voice conversation' with a chatbot (i.e., the user speaks into their microphone, which is converted into text and passed to the chatbot, which returns a text response which is synthesised into speech). We have recently been using Azure Cognitive Speech Services to handle speech-to-text and text-to-speech elements of interacting with a chatbot.
Pros and Cons
  • Accurate speech-to-text
  • Realistic 'voice' when using text-to-speech
  • Customisable 'voices' for text-to-speech
  • Occasionally, words in text-to-speech are not pronounced correctly
  • Sometimes the speech recognition is inaccurate
  • We have many non-native English speakers in our organisation, and the speech recognition occasionally struggles to understand certain words spoken in different accents
Likelihood to Recommend
It is well suited for scenarios where there is a requirement to integrate speech-to-text and text-to-speech into user interaction, for example, with chatbots used internally at a large enterprise. We have also investigated the use of Azure Cognitive Speech Services for live captions during meetings and presentations and the additional translation of these captions from English into German.
Most Important Features
  • Accurate speech recognition
  • Realistic synthesized text-to-speech 'voices'
  • Ability to translate speech and text from English to German and vice-versa
  • Live captions during meetings and presentations
Return on Investment
  • Positive user response
  • Increased usage of internal enterprise chatbots
  • Improved accessibility and inclusivity for sight-impaired users
Other Software Used
Azure Bot Service (Microsoft Bot Framework), Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Azure
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