I need your suggestion for a Text to Audio Software for Articulate Storyline 1. Mainly I need voices which doesn't have any accent (Neutral Accent) with good modulation and pronunciation.
Licensing is usually sticky for redistribution for tools and voices like Acapela. If you don't mind a live connection and a "per use" volume price, the Vocalware sets are actually pretty good. The advantage to something like this is you can customize the voice to personalize the message. Responsivevoice offers a similar API setup as well as a way to plug directly into Storyline.
What I want in a software where in I can type the text and download the audio in mp3 format. There should be features like controlling of speech rate and pitch, voice modulation, different voices with neutral accent and good pronunciation. Something similar to Acapela but better than it.
Also, I am not a techi guy, will you be able to explain the things in a simpler fashion please.
Unless things have changed (it is the fast-moving tech world after all!), there used to be only a couple of "engines" that were underneath all of the different text-to-speech options. For some reason, the female UK voice for each of those engines always sounded the least robotic.
Reason I mention this.... even though you can do text to speech different ways from different companies, you may find several of them don't sound all that different..... for a reason.
Yep. Many use very similar engines and voices. I find the Acapela to be in an older wave of technology. Ivona uses a bit newer technology. Vocalware's stuff sounds better than the Acapela voices in most of my tests. Most folks don't understand that commercial licensing for even the voices that don't sound that great is pretty significant. Ivona's commercial use for a single voice was $800 last I checked.
I've noticed the accented voices sound less robotic to my ear as well. I wonder if it's because of the novelty of the accented voice? Makes variances from expectations less noticeable.
For temp voice generation, I simply use the built-in Mac voices. These voices aren't licensed for permanent use but for scratch voice with one or two reviewers, it doesn't seem that afoul of intent. You'd be hard pressed to find end user documentation for these voices in the Mac implementation.
The only case I'd ever consider for narrating using a synthetic voice over a real voice is if I wanted to make it dynamic and adaptive to the person (calling them by name) and adapting to their choices in a way that's impossible to do with pre-recorded narration.
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Licensing is usually sticky for redistribution for tools and voices like Acapela. If you don't mind a live connection and a "per use" volume price, the Vocalware sets are actually pretty good. The advantage to something like this is you can customize the voice to personalize the message. Responsivevoice offers a similar API setup as well as a way to plug directly into Storyline.
Thanks Steve for your reply.
What I want in a software where in I can type the text and download the audio in mp3 format. There should be features like controlling of speech rate and pitch, voice modulation, different voices with neutral accent and good pronunciation. Something similar to Acapela but better than it.
Also, I am not a techi guy, will you be able to explain the things in a simpler fashion please.
Unless things have changed (it is the fast-moving tech world after all!), there used to be only a couple of "engines" that were underneath all of the different text-to-speech options. For some reason, the female UK voice for each of those engines always sounded the least robotic.
Reason I mention this.... even though you can do text to speech different ways from different companies, you may find several of them don't sound all that different..... for a reason.
Yep. Many use very similar engines and voices. I find the Acapela to be in an older wave of technology. Ivona uses a bit newer technology. Vocalware's stuff sounds better than the Acapela voices in most of my tests. Most folks don't understand that commercial licensing for even the voices that don't sound that great is pretty significant. Ivona's commercial use for a single voice was $800 last I checked.
I've noticed the accented voices sound less robotic to my ear as well. I wonder if it's because of the novelty of the accented voice? Makes variances from expectations less noticeable.
For temp voice generation, I simply use the built-in Mac voices. These voices aren't licensed for permanent use but for scratch voice with one or two reviewers, it doesn't seem that afoul of intent. You'd be hard pressed to find end user documentation for these voices in the Mac implementation.
The only case I'd ever consider for narrating using a synthetic voice over a real voice is if I wanted to make it dynamic and adaptive to the person (calling them by name) and adapting to their choices in a way that's impossible to do with pre-recorded narration.
Thank you Steve. Your reply really helped me a lot.
Thank you Bob for your reply.
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