diff --git a/TTS/utils/synthesizer.py b/TTS/utils/synthesizer.py
index 8f58121a..84ca6111 100644
--- a/TTS/utils/synthesizer.py
+++ b/TTS/utils/synthesizer.py
@@ -22,6 +22,7 @@ class Synthesizer(object):
         self,
         tts_checkpoint: str,
         tts_config_path: str,
+        tts_speakers_file: str = "",
         vocoder_checkpoint: str = "",
         vocoder_config: str = "",
         use_cuda: bool = False,
@@ -44,6 +45,7 @@ class Synthesizer(object):
         """
         self.tts_checkpoint = tts_checkpoint
         self.tts_config_path = tts_config_path
+        self.tts_speakers_file = tts_speakers_file
         self.vocoder_checkpoint = vocoder_checkpoint
         self.vocoder_config = vocoder_config
         self.use_cuda = use_cuda
@@ -67,9 +69,9 @@ class Synthesizer(object):
         return pysbd.Segmenter(language=lang, clean=True)
 
 
-    def _load_speakers(self) -> None:
+    def _load_speakers(self, speaker_file: str) -> None:
         print("Loading speakers ...")
-        self.tts_speakers = load_speaker_mapping(self.tts_config.external_speaker_embedding_file)
+        self.tts_speakers = load_speaker_mapping(speaker_file)
         self.num_speakers = len(self.tts_speakers)
         self.speaker_embedding_dim = len(self.tts_speakers[list(self.tts_speakers.keys())[0]][
             "embedding"
@@ -79,12 +81,12 @@ class Synthesizer(object):
 
         speaker_embedding = None
 
-        if self.tts_config.get("use_external_speaker_embedding_file") and not speaker_json_key:
-            raise ValueError("While 'use_external_speaker_embedding_file', you must pass a 'speaker_json_key'")
+        if not speaker_json_key:
+            raise ValueError(" [!] While 'use_external_speaker_embedding_file', you must pass a 'speaker_json_key'")
 
         if speaker_json_key != "":
             assert self.tts_speakers
-            assert speaker_json_key in self.tts_speakers, f"speaker_json_key is not in self.tts_speakers keys : '{speaker_idx}'"
+            assert speaker_json_key in self.tts_speakers, f" [!] speaker_json_key is not in self.tts_speakers keys : '{speaker_json_key}'"
             speaker_embedding = self.tts_speakers[speaker_json_key]["embedding"]
 
         return speaker_embedding
@@ -109,7 +111,7 @@ class Synthesizer(object):
             self.input_size = len(symbols)
 
         if self.tts_config.use_speaker_embedding is True:
-            self._load_speakers()
+            self._load_speakers(self.tts_config.get('external_speaker_embedding_file', self.tts_speakers_file))
 
         self.tts_model = setup_model(
             self.input_size,