Note by @fastfinge

From what I understand, there are many main varience of eloquence, if only 64bit is factored, the first, and most known is @fastfinge eloquence_64, release v20, 14.8mb, last updated july 12 github.com/fastfinge/eloquence_64/releases The project came into light on Oct 15 2025 and now in it's 20th version.

and then, there's @nick Eloquence64RS: Community-maintained Eloquence synthesizer for 64-bit NVDA with a Rust host, more snappier according to @serrebi and @amir, current version Eloquence64RS 19.1.3-RS, 9.13 MB last updated 16 august.github.com/Nick6489/Eloquence64RS/releases This project is quite popular and according to the Author the project innitially started to fix a peculiar bug that they were having, and then it implemented something that the community really love, the 22khz mode, which is different implementation from @HOzosch implementation.b according to Nick, > the optional Enhanced 22 kHz audio mode. The new mode is an original Rust DSP implementation with speech-presence shaping, stateful polyphase interpolation, and "what Eloquence might be like if we combined Sam's logic with the Rust host of davidacm/NVDA-IBMTTS-Driver, just without the IBM specific plumming? What we get is lower RAM usage and, maybe it's just my ears, lower keypress delay. We still, for now, have the need to copy an executable onto secure screens, there are no interface changes in this version. But we cut RAM usage in half. suppression of mirrored high-frequency energy.

And then, there's the @HOzosch eloquence64 project, upsampling tweeked from the original @fastfinge project, to make the output more clearer. The latest v20 that's released on 29 August, with 15.16 mb, drops the 22khz upsampling for a new native 16 kHZ mode, that's received with some mixed reviews. github.com/hozosch/eloquence_64/releases/

There's also the OpenEvv, Mudb0y/openevvReimplementation of IBM's Embedded ViaVoice / ETI Eloquence SF in portable C, github.com/Mudb0y/openevv and the #NVDA ad-on created by @mew github.com/masonasons/OpenEVVWindows/

Some of the earlier granddaddies are the davidacm/NVDA-IBMTTS-Driver, first released April 7 2019, last released v26.6.2, released on June 4th, 2026,with 358 kb in size, github.com/davidacm/NVDA-IBMTTS-Driver/releases and, pumper42nickel/eloquence_threshold made the legacy NVDA eloquence, first released Aug 26, 2019 Last released v0.20250420.01, on May 31, 2025 github.com/pumper42nickel/eloquence_threshold/releases Do let me know if I missed any great people here. #eloquence #tts #blind #nvda

@kaveinthran @NicksWorld That looks mostly right. My 64-bit eloquence started as a conversion of pumper's work, before gaining its own features. It might also be worth mentioning that way, way, way back in the early days of NVDA, it had a built-in eloquence addon. However, they were sent a legal letter and required to discontinue it. Until the other addons existed, many people used the SAPI4 viavoice that could be found by installing products like IBM Homepage Reader. Also, the first versions of the addon were not released on github; they were on places like datajake's website, by a completely anonimous author who does not wish to be identified. It was this person who determined that the best dll files to use are the ECI.dll, 6.1 files. If you examine ancient versions of the addon, you can still find there username in ECI.ini.

@fastfinge @NicksWorld @kaveinthran Man, this is very interesting to learn! I wonder who sent NVDA that letter? I wonder if it was stupid code factory, or ETI themselves? Code factory are some bastards, but that is its own thing. It seems like the open source community eloquence is always the one that ends up winning. Though, I would love to know about the apple eloquence, especially the one in iOS 27, they’ve really been tweaking with it and now it’s a lot better like the NVDA one. There's now openEvv, in which there's an addon @mew@fwoof.space created for it seeable at github.com/masonasons/OpenEVVWindows which is pretty cool as well. I guess eloquence will live on for a long, long time? My ultimate ponder, who says what we can do with it? I mean, it's everywhere now! Nobody's been jailed over eloq to my knowledge yet? Eloquence is like vision to me, I wake up and just listen to the traffic I've heard for years that is eloquence. Eloquence is truely one of thee best formant synthesizers ever created in my opinionated opinion. Have a great day everyone, and this is such a beautiful thread. Why is it eloquence is so obsessive? Hmm.

@danestange @NicksWorld @kaveinthran @mew@fwoof.space No, that letter would have been sent long before CodeFactory even made an NVDA addon, back when NVDA was still hosted on sourceforge, not even github. So it can't be them, they didn't exist.

@fastfinge @danestange @kaveinthran @mew@fwoof.space SO, I don't exactly remember how i got into this conversation but...

@NicksWorld @fastfinge @danestange @mew@fwoof.space Sorry, that was completely my mistake let me edit the post

@fastfinge @NicksWorld @kaveinthran Lots of great insights! For a long time I myself used Kurzweil 1000's IBM ViaVoice, SAPI 4, in NVDA.

@amir @NicksWorld @kaveinthran Oh yes, I forgot Kurzweil was another place to get it. I think Window Eyes may have also included the SAPI version? But I'm unsure.

@fastfinge @amir @NicksWorld @kaveinthran Window-Eyes shipped the SAPI version of Eloquence 5.0 through version 6.1, then went with ECI 6.1 starting in 7.0 because going direct no longer incurred the SAPI performance penalty and was newer.