Audiobooks discussion
Technical stuff
>
Not an Audibook, but Text-To-Speech eReader Apps
date
newest »
newest »
I have used Speak to Me in conjunction with iBooks - but I still vastly prefer professional narration when available.
It'd be nice if you could get it for the kindle apps, not requiring a reader. I mean I only use my smartphone for books, and there are a number of ebooks I want to listen too that are only kindle, and no audio version. I'd be happy to give TTS a go for them. I need something I can use on the move, in my pocket. A kindle is not meant for pocket use... I mean limiting TTS to a physical reader is sort of nonsensisical. The mobile device is when you need it.
I learned how to convert my kindle formatted books to epub so I could listen to them using VoiceDream. I agree Kindle is not a pocket device but a smartphone is. VoiceDream works on iphone and Ipad and mac only. I emailed the company asking if they would be releasing it for Android and Windows and they did not respond to my question!
Kindle has a TTS feature for some books (it depends on whether the publisher has enabled the feature or not). Unfortunately it only has a very basic computerised voice, and you can't install any of the high quality voices that are available on other platforms.
Briar Rose wrote: "Kindle has a TTS feature for some books (it depends on whether the publisher has enabled the feature or not). Unfortunately it only has a very basic computerised voice, and you can't install any of..."Ah right. Thanks - so definitely not worth getting a kindle reader just for TTS... :)
Michael wrote: "Briar Rose wrote: "Kindle has a TTS feature for some books (it depends on whether the publisher has enabled the feature or not). Unfortunately it only has a very basic computerised voice, and you c..."Not *just* for the TTS, no. The TTS was a factor when I bought it though. It's useful in low-light when I'm having trouble reading the text.
Mine is an older model Kindle touch, not a Paperwhite. AFAIK, Paperwhites don't have speakers, so there would be no TTS function.
If you're using an Android device, there is a TTS company called CereProc whose voices sound really natural, and are all available to download through the Google Play store. Once downloaded they can replace the default TTS for eReaders etc. https://play.google.com/store/apps/de...
Thanks Francesca! I will have to try out some of these voices and see if it works with my Android phone. So far i use Voice Dream with my ipad and am pretty happy with it, but I would like to have a good TTS eReader voice with my phone. Not sure if the "mechanical-intonation" quality of the voice will be helped with a Cereproc voice...
Great discussion! I use text to voice a lot but have not really looked around for the "best" application. I use the text to voice application on my kindle and on my PC i use Natural Reader.
I've been using textaloud on iPhone which uses the acapela TTS voices. Very realistic and cheap to buy extra voices also. To read books though is an arduous task as one needs to copy and paste chunks of text though.
I have to say that audiobooks recorded by real people - usually actors with years of experience interpreting text - are vastly superior to even the very best TTS out there. And this goes double for non-fiction. It's really not that expensive to just download the audiobook these days.
I agree that audiobooks are my first choice when I want/need to "listen" to a book rather than sit down and glue my eyeballs to something. But not all books have audiobooks recorded. Not even half of all the books I want to read have audiobooks recorded...in fact I don't even think it comes close to 25%... To me, the TTS eReader is better than not reading a particular book at all.
I like that the TTS eReaders are customizable so you can choose a voice and pitch and speed that you like. And certain systems have pretty good intonation so it doesn't sound so mechanical. A few times my S.O. has asked when I had an ebook being played, "is that Voice Dream reading it or a narrator?" and I don't answer letting him guess. It isn't immediately obvious on a first, short listen.
Exactly. If you can't have the audiobook (or don't want to rip a CD) there are times when you MUST use TTS.
it only has a very basic computerised voice, and you can't install any of the high quality voices that are available on other platforms.If you have a Kindle HDX, you can add additional voices. The Brit male is quite easy to understand. I also use the one on my kindle keyboard. Rather robotic, but works fine. What I haven't been able to figure out is how to get epubs on my Itouch so that I can use Voice Dream. I need a step-by-step since the general instructions aren't working for me.
It's really not that expensive to just download the audiobook these days.
Many books have no audiobooks. In addition, if you are unable to read, the cost can get quite high quickly. Right now, we can get many audiobooks cheaply through whispersync, but eventually the gravy train will end.
The answer is probably above, but the reason I want it to read to me, is I just don't have time... What can I use on my kindle for PC that sounds decent and will just read the text and easy? I tried and couple and am not doing something right perhaps. Sad I'm missing on my books because THIS was my time to get to listen. Argh.
Just had an eye op and have temporarily very poor eyesight, so expected to be able to easily find a simple windows/android app to just speak my epub books without having to install separate TTS or delve deeply into settings and menus to activate.I failed of course; should have sorted this issue out earlier.
Rob wrote: "Just had an eye op and have temporarily very poor eyesight, so expected to be able to easily find a simple windows/android app to just speak my epub books without having to install separate TTS or ..."Your library might have the Overdrive option that would allow you to download audiobooks from their collection, something to tide you over for a bit. Best regards.
Rob wrote: "Just had an eye op and have temporarily very poor eyesight, so expected to be able to easily find a simple windows/android app to just speak my epub books without having to install separate TTS or ..."I just downloaded @Voice Read Aloud from Google Play. It has a beta version to read epubs, but so far I haven't been able to get it to work with my epubs. It works fine with text files, pdf, etc. It also says it will work with blue tooth devices, and can be linked to your Dropbox account. Since I just downloaded it, I can't tell you much else about it, but it does work on my Samsung tablet and at least my tablet has a fairly decent TTS voice.
Carlissa wrote: "Rob wrote: "Just had an eye op and have temporarily very poor eyesight, so expected to be able to easily find a simple windows/android app to just speak my epub books without having to install sepa..."Vision has now improved enough to use ereader so panic over !
Have downloaded Balabolka onto Win8 PC and this works with just opening epub book in my Calibre library. It is using stock Windows Hazel voice and I havent had to do any configuration.
Didnt realise how expensive good natural Voices are.
Thanks for advice everyone
Rob wrote: Vision has now improved enough to use ereader so panic over !..."Glad to hear that your vision is improving! Balabolka sounds interesting, I'll give it a try for my computer.
If you're still looking for something to work on Android, I got @Voice Read Aloud to open epub files. The app works fine with opening a text file from Dropbox, but the epub file had to be downloaded to my tablet before it would open it! It separates the book into chapters and puts them in a playlist, which is nice if you don't have time to listen to the whole book at once. It would be nice if it would let me bookmark where I left off, but at least all I have to remember is which chapter I'm on.
Thanks will give it a try, as I said initially there would seem to be a need for a simple bombproof "voice ereader" ready to go requiring minimum visual input.
I go through the text-to-speech engines every year or so to check on the improvements and so far I have not found anything near the real person reading experience. On the other hand, Paul by NeoSpeech sounds the closest to a real being, guess I could get used to listening to the voice for shorter periods of time. They have a demo on their webpage, check it out: http://www.neospeech.com/I still stay with genuine audiobooks though :)
FYI, the Fire phone has text to speech in kindle app. It is on sale today for $130 which extends Prime by a year or gives you a year if you don't have it.$30 for a great mini HDX is a wonderful deal.
I have been using moon reader pro for android for years now. Since android lets you choose your tts engine, I have been using INOVA TTS. I really like the UK Amy voice, but to be honest I have not tried a new tts in years since I set everything up. Moon Reader Pro is a fantastic eReader app with dropbox and google drive integration. I does cost money ($5 or $2.50 on sale) however so maybe its not the best option for everyone. If anyone has recommendations for a new voice to try I would like to hear it. Also I plan to eventually try switching to windows phone 10 and want to make sure there is a tts enabled eReader on that ecosystem before I do. Does anyone know of one?
I use iBooks for my iPhone. Works perfectly. Of course, it's not the same as an actual audiobook. But I'd rather read the book with VoiceOver than not at all. I don't like borrowing books, I prefer owning them. So talking DAISY books are out of the question for me. I have one question for you guys. If you read a novel with tts, do you feel you are able to get into the story emotionally with the voice? I mean with audiobooks you get the feel of the characters in a sort of straight forward way thanks to the narrator. How do you feel your experiences have been with tts? I'm really interested in the answer. This is something I have been longing to know for a while now!
I think a good TTS should show you where you are by highlighting at least the sentence you read and preferably also the word that is read at that moment, like a karaoke. This because I want to read what I hear. This is for learning better than just listening. You also know where you are when you stopt reading along and want to start reading along again. It is difficult to find one. I bought software called Kurzweil that can do this but is at least 500 euro's and works on computers and Ipads/Iphones/mac's. Not on android-tablets, or phones. The second best so far is @voice aloud that works on tablets. I can not find an e-reader that has a good tts-system. Does anyone know a good e-reader that has a good tts?
AerinLuvs how did you convert your kindle books to epub? I've been trying to figure that one out for a while. Please help!
Alicia wrote: "AerinLuvs how did you convert your kindle books to epub? I've been trying to figure that one out for a while. Please help!"you can use calibre to do that
Paris (kerbytejas) wrote: "Alicia wrote: "AerinLuvs how did you convert your kindle books to epub? I've been trying to figure that one out for a while. Please help!"you can use calibre to do that"
Hello there, just to add some information about this.
I use books created with TTS all the time, in my case, because i like to listen to them in several languages.
If you work with Windows, the best solution is to convert the books to mp3, so you can create small files (in my case 15 minutes per file) and import them to any other device to listen to these files while traveling or working.
I use voices created by Ivona, for english books I prefer a voice called Emma, after testing some other options this one was the best I could find.
English is not my native language, so perhaps I'm not the best person to recommend it, but I find this one very good.
I also got their voices for spanish, italian, french and portuguese and they are very good.
I would be interested in information about other british voices to give them a try.
Well, here is the link for their voice portfolio:
https://www.ivona.com/us/about-us/voi...
I don't mind TTS on a pinch. It's the copying and pasting I despise! If I could get around that, it would be a joy...
In a pinch. I hate not being able to edit my posts on the fly!
Axis 360 has text to speech functionality built in. You just hold on the text and click continuous. Remember to update your installed text to speech for high quality audio (I go with the British voice).
Carlyn wrote: "I have to say that audiobooks recorded by real people - usually actors with years of experience interpreting text - are vastly superior to even the very best TTS out there. And this goes double for..."Many visually impaired readers have no choice in the matter :/
FYI - the new Kindle Basic has bluetooth which allows you to listen to TTS on any blue tooth speaker. I also use TTS on my Fires. The voice quality is significantly improved from the Kindle Keyboard.
I like voicedream and voiceover in kindle app but would like both more if I can select text and repeat over and over.
For Android, I use Moon Reader Pro (plus does not have TTS)Though usually, I use my Kindle Fire's built-in TTS... but there are a few publishers who do NOT enable such a feature on their ebooks! In which case, that leaves me no choice but to deDRM the book and pass it to Moon Reader through DropBox.
On the PC side, I use Calibre with the tts plug-in
https://calibre-ebook.com/
https://github.com/christineye/calibr...
I use E-reader Prestigio on Android. It has good functionality with TTS (one button push to start, can pause and go back / forward one paragraph; can play in the background while surfing the web or other multitasking).
I started using Android's Talkback today since I saw it has a continuous playback option for reading a web page if you shake your device. That should work for now I guess, though I'd love a better continuous web page reader app that doesn't require you to highlight stuff or download / stream page content (that app I have that does the lattee doesn't work with the pages I want to listen to).
I have been using @voice aloud on android and i love everything about it except it frequently just stops working, so currently looking for a good replacement....I also just wanted to recommend pocket for anyone that wants articles etc read to them, esp if you use ifttt to subcribe to rss feed of websites you like :D
Prestigo ereader looks pretty good but you can't speed the voice up fast enough for me :)Currently trialling pocketbook (you have to longpress to find the tty menu.
I just downloaded Voice Dream and I was successfully able to upload a PDF for grad school reading and start listening to it! No longer am I tethered to my laptop for Kindle TTS! Thank you all for contributing to this, although I know at this point the thread is old. :)
I need a bit of help if anyone has any advice.Select to Speak functionality on Android broke somehow, and I can't get it to read past the visible page view in both my web browser and apps. Before, it would continuously read to the part of the page that you can't see on screen.
Is there a setting I should turn on or off?
Presitigio probably hasn't the most i tuitive TTS functionality of thev various ebook readers that I am aware of in Android. Since buying Ivana Amazon seems to be determined to crush the service and squeeze more money out o d it by making it subscription. There are a few decent independent voice engines, such as voclarize
I am a new convert and fan to VOICE DREAM, which is an amazing TTS eReader (and regular eReader) with various voices that you can purchase for the IOS platform (not available in Android or Windows).
You can adjust the speed, pitch of the voice, and also change the pronunciation of certain words in its "dictionary"...I still need a little practice with this.
If anyone else has been using VoiceDream I would love to discuss tips to using it better!