This is a bug not a feature. covid-19 sounds like covid 19. NASDAQ 100
S&P500
etc.
For the neural voices

Irish (Gaeilge) tts works with neural voice but only if correct IPA syntax is used before sending the request for tts using the cognitive services tts API. I have found a quick way to convert Irish sentences into IPA text. Suggest that this conversion from Irish text to IPA text should be available at Microsoft server side so that tts for irish (Gaeilge) would be available for everyone. Please see attached example of irish Gaeilge tts MP3 using this method.

http://lmknjb.com/irishTTS/IRISHTTSSAMPLE.mp3

En-GB mia neural voice pronounces the number 4 too quickly in sentences. Whether it is the digit or the word, same problem. I’m able to workaround this by adjusting the prosody speed of just that number :)

Teacher

Like a German/French/Spanish/Italian person speaking English, all have their own accent. Perfect for applications like Air Traffic Control etc.

Some of the unites are not pronounces correctly.
In my case i am using "9 Mega Watt" as (9MW) and its speaking correctly, but for 9 mili Watt (mW), its speaking wrong and saying Mega Watt. Can you update it, or provide separate access for customization acronyms.

I'd like to see the speech API coming to Raspberry PI, meaning having FULL ARM32 support for the linux implementation of this SDK. This would enable the raspi maker community to use Azure Speech seamlessly in their devices.

It would be beneficial for GovCloud users to have secure access a list of available endpoints for the service listed under the overview instead of just the token issuing endpoint forcing one to comb through out of date documentation trying to find the secured GovCloud endpoints.

Something changed with the zh-CN-XiaoxiaoNeural voice - the 'sentiment' expression no longer works, as of a few days ago. Using exactly the same code, but the output is quite different (no longer sounds sentimental). Was an update posted? If so, where do we find a list of changes?

Hi,

The new neural text 2 speech feature looks amazing, but one language is missing : French :)

I don't know if it something on the list, or if it is coming soon, but I'm waiting for this feature to switch from Google Wavenet.
I'm pretty sure that the french voice generated by this new neural TTS by MS Cognitive service will be a game changer.

The french language is complex, the emphasis, the punctation etc... but if MS can provide the same awesome quality as they have done in english... we will be able to build something incredible...

Once the synthesizer starts synthesizing audio, it can't be stopped. It would be nice to have some method that would stop/interrupt currently running audio synthesis.

Azure Speech API should offer json mark labels for Text to Speech audio. This allows developers to use the audio file and the json mark labels to create audio tracking text in the app. The competitor has a similar solution. I found Azure TTS to be superior but am forced to use the competitor's solution due to lack of json mark labels. Speech mark labels should be in json format and available for all languages. It should provide information such as the begin and end timestamp of each sound to the text, phrase and sentences.