Command say and use to record multiples voices in one command

You can't use say for that. Depending on how serious you are, you can create multiple speech synthesizers or output files, but you would need to synchronize them - the various voices do not speak with the same timings. You might be able to use something like a multi-track audio application to synchronize and save the output, otherwise you would need to use another utility (or write your own) to save the combined audio.

The existing APIs (and say) provide ways to customize and save the speech output to a file, but they deal with individual voices. Multiple voices will result in multiple files, so you can run multiple voices and capture the combined output, or you can combine multiple voice files. Since you will need to synchronize the voices anyway (note that the exact speaking rate and the way the words themselves are spoken differ between voices), you could use something like Audacity to combine and synchronize to a single file.

Hi Olivier. If you don’t mind installing additional components, one option is to use the command line sound processing utility SoX to mix individual audio files. If not installed, install the Homebrew package manager from Terminal:

/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)”

Then install SoX:

brew install sox

The following series of commands will create two /tmp audio files (automatically deleted by the system after a preconfigured period of time), mix them together, and place the mixed audio file on the Desktop. Copy and paste the following as a block into Terminal:

say -v Thomas "Bonjour" -o /tmp/bj.aiff &&

say -v Bruce "Good morning" -o /tmp/gm.aiff &&

sox -m /tmp/bj.aiff /tmp/gm.aiff ~/Desktop/bonjour.aiff

For best results use enhanced-quality voices. Because overlapping speech can create an aural muddle with poor distinction between the speech parts, you can add silence with the silence command [[slnc]] in milliseconds to adjust the amount of overlap. For instance:

say -v Thomas "Bonjour" -o /tmp/bj.aiff &&

say -v Bruce "[[slnc 300]] Good morning" -o /tmp/gm.aiff &&

sox -m /tmp/bj.aiff /tmp/gm.aiff ~/Desktop/bonjour.aiff

If you want to play the speech synthesizers simultaneously and record to file from the command line without creating individual temp files, first install GNU parallel with Homebrew from Terminal:

brew install parallel

Use the following command and follow the directions to silence the citation notice:

parallel --bibtex

Additionally, download and install either iShowU Audio Capture or Soundflower to be able to capture system sound. Once installed, open the Audio MIDI Setup app located in /Applications/Utilities/. Press the '+' button in the bottom left corner and select "Create Multi Output Device”.

If using iShowU Audio Capture, select both "Built-in Output” and "iShowU Audio Capture” in the right side panel. If using Soundflower, select both "Built-in Output” and "Soundflower (2ch)”. In either case, if selected, deselect “Drift Correction” as a starting point. You can change the name from Multi-Output Device in the left side panel by clicking on it.

With either iShowU Audio Capture or Soundflower, select the corresponding Multi-Output-Device in the left side panel, click the gear icon in the bottom left and select "use this device for sound output”.

Still in the left side panel, select either "iShowU Audio Capture” or "Soundflower (2ch)”, click the gear icon in the bottom left and select “use this device for sound input”. In the right side panel, click the Input button and reduce the master volume (M) to a value of 0.96 or less to prevent clipping.

Note the microphone and speaker icons for the currently selected input and output. You can also select input and output devices by navigating to  > System Preferences > Sound.

In Terminal, use the following piped commands which will place an audio file on the Desktop:

parallel ::: 'say -v Bruce "Good morning"' 'say -v Thomas "Bonjour"' | rec ~/Desktop/bonjour.aiff trim 0 00:02

Adjust the recording time, 2 seconds in the above example (00:02), as necessary.

Tested with OS X Yosemite 10.10.5

Hello

Here's another option to use ffmpeg. You may obtain pre-compiled binaries for OS X from the following source.

http://www.ffmpegmac.net/

Download the zip archive, expand it and copy ffmpeg, ffprobe and ffserver to, e.g., /usr/local/bin.

E.g.,

#!/bin/bash SITE='http://www.ffmpegmac.net/resources' FILE='SnowLeopard_Lion_Mountain_Lion_Mavericks_Yosemite_El-Captain_02.05.2016.zip' DIR=~/Desktop/ffmpeg_install_temp # cd to temp directory mkdir -p "$DIR" && cd "$DIR" || exit # download zip archive curl -O "${SITE}/${FILE}" || exit # expand archive unzip -u "$FILE" # chown and copy files to /usr/local/bin sudo chown root:wheel ffmpeg ffprobe ffserver sudo cp -pPR ffmpeg ffprobe ffserver /usr/local/bin

And here's a sample script to concatenate and/or mix audio files generated by say command using ffmpeg. I'd presume you're concatenating files rather than mixing them.

#!/bin/bash DIR=~/Desktop/test mkdir -p "$DIR" && cd "$DIR" || exit say 'Good morning' -v Bruce -o 'good_morning.aiff' say 'Bonjour' -v Ralph -o 'bonjour.aiff' FFMPEG=/usr/local/bin/ffmpeg # concatenate : using filter_complex, concat "$FFMPEG" \ -i good_morning.aiff \ -i bonjour.aiff \ -filter_complex '[0:a] [1:a] concat=n=2:v=0:a=1 [aout]' \ -map '[aout]' \ -y \ bonjour1.aiff # mix (mixdown to stereo) : using filter_complex amerge and -ac 2 option "$FFMPEG" \ -i good_morning.aiff \ -i bonjour.aiff \ -filter_complex '[0:a] [1:a] amerge=inputs=2 [aout]' \ -map '[aout]' \ -ac 2 \ -y \ bonjour2.aiff # mix (file 1's L/R to output's L, file 2's L/R to output's R) : using filter_complex amerge, pan "$FFMPEG" \ -i good_morning.aiff \ -i bonjour.aiff \ -filter_complex '[0:a] [1:a] amerge=inputs=2,pan=stereo|c0<c0+c1|c1<c2+c3 [aout]' \ -map '[aout]' \ -y \ bonjour3.aiff

For complete documentation of ffmpeg, you may explore the following

https://ffmpeg.org/documentation.html

Scripts are tested under OS X 10.6.8.

Good luck,

H

To concatenate rather than mix using SoX:

say -v Thomas "Bonjour" -o /tmp/bj.aiff &&

say -v Bruce "Good morning" -o /tmp/gm.aiff &&

sox /tmp/bj.aiff /tmp/gm.aiff ~/Desktop/bonjour.aiff

SoX documentation

If using SoX to concatenate and wanting a .m4a file, you can use afconvert:

say -v Thomas "Bonjour" -o /tmp/bj.aiff &&

say -v Bruce "Good morning" -o /tmp/gm.aiff &&

sox /tmp/bj.aiff /tmp/gm.aiff /tmp/bjgm.aiff &&

afconvert -f m4af /tmp/bjgm.aiff ~/Desktop/bonjour.m4a

This will convert an 84 KB .aiff tmp file to a 12 KB .m4a file.

For afconvert help on the command line:

afconvert -h

To print a list of supported file formats:

afconvert -hf