Features
Eloqium gives you separate controls for the sound of the voice and for the way incoming text is prepared for speech. The descriptions below explain what the settings change and how the available choices differ.
Voice
The first two settings categories cover the voice itself and additional voice-character adjustments.
Eloqium currently provides eight regional language variants: US English, UK English, Spanish for Spain, Spanish for Mexico and Latin America, French for France, French for Canada, German, and Italian. Every variant uses the same eight voice presets: Reed, Shelley, Bobby, Rocko, Glen, Sandy, Grandma, Grandpa.
View the complete voice listThe Speech rate setting uses a relative scale from -10 to +10, with 0 representing the engine’s normal baseline. When Force rate is disabled, Eloqium uses the speech-rate value supplied by the Android application making the request. When it is enabled, the configured Eloqium value is used instead. Unlock maximum rate extends the upper limit available to the forced rate setting.
The Pitch setting provides a relative adjustment from -10 to +10 around the selected voice’s base pitch. With Force pitch disabled, Eloqium follows the pitch requested through Android’s TTS interface; with it enabled, Eloqium applies the configured pitch value instead.
Force volume enables a relative digital gain adjustment on the synthesized 16-bit PCM audio before it is supplied to Android. The Volume setting can attenuate the signal below its baseline or increase it above the baseline, with the resulting samples constrained to the 16-bit range. This does not replace Android’s normal system playback volume control.
Inflection, Head size, Roughness, and Breathiness provide additional relative controls around the selected voice’s baseline parameters. These settings are separate from the basic rate and pitch controls, so they can be adjusted when you want to change the character of the voice without simply making it faster or higher.
The ECI Voice Tags setting controls whether compatible inline backquote voice and control annotations in incoming text are allowed through the compatibility-processing stage. It is intended for applications or content that deliberately use such annotations.
Eloqium provides seven selectable sampling rates: 8,000 Hz, 11,025 Hz, 16,000 Hz, 22,050 Hz, 32,000 Hz, 44,100 Hz, and 48,000 Hz. The default rate is 11,025 Hz. This setting changes the rate used by the native synthesis engine rather than an Android device requirement.
Provides foreground-service support that can improve reliability during background speech, particularly on devices with restrictive background management. The service includes an ongoing notification while active and access to Android battery optimization settings.
Text processing
These settings affect the text that is prepared for the native speech synthesizer. They are particularly useful when ordinary written text contains information that you want presented differently when heard aloud.
Enable Process punctuation when you want punctuation marks to be verbalized. The Punctuation level setting determines how broad the spoken-punctuation set is:
Punctuation that is not spoken can still affect ordinary phrasing and pause behavior. Number and time expressions also receive special handling so that punctuation inside them is not treated in exactly the same way as punctuation standing alone.
When Use number processing is enabled, the selected mode determines how a multi-digit sequence is separated before synthesis:
Phonetic pronunciation entries are protected from number processing, so digits already contained inside a pronunciation annotation are not reformatted by this setting.
Controls how uppercase letters are handled during speech. The available options are None, Pitch raise, and Say capital. When Pitch raise is selected, Eloqium raises pitch only for standalone uppercase one-letter words, such as A or I, without altering uppercase characters inside ordinary words.
Use abbreviations enables the built-in abbreviation dictionary. It expands supported forms such as titles, road and address abbreviations, and common expressions including e.g., i.e., and etc.. The processor also applies context-sensitive handling for forms such as St. so that common uses can be distinguished.
Emoji / Emoticon enables speech descriptions for supported emoji sequences and a defined set of ASCII emoticons. Emoji are converted into localized spoken descriptions before synthesis. The emoticon processor protects patterns that resemble URLs, times, ratios, Windows paths, code operators, and similar text so they are not accidentally treated as emoticons.
Intonation pauses changes how Eloqium prepares pauses around punctuation. When enabled, the normal pause-preserving mode is retained. When disabled, the broader pause-processing path is used. Phrase prediction is a separate setting and is enabled by default.
Pronunciation
The User Dictionary can replace incoming text or supply a specific pronunciation for text that needs to be spoken differently. Dictionaries are associated with a regional language and can contain multiple independent rules.
Read the dictionary guideAndroid TTS
Eloqium is implemented as an Android TextToSpeechService. Compatible applications can use Android’s standard text-to-speech interface to request supported languages and voices and to send text for synthesis.