I am searching for Text to Speech Software to buy. I have not found any voices that I like. Are there any programs that have great voices that do not sound robotic and can convert text in an MP3 file. I have looked at Natural Reader. Is there anything out there that is better and what is the approximate price? Thanks for your help!
Storyline doesn't support text to speech in the runtime or in the authoring tool.
To the OP's point, the best and most flexible voices I've found are Loquendo. Looks like Nuance picked them up. Neat thing about this is the emotes and the emphasis with punctuation. Haven't seen this with other TTS systems. I am not seeing a simple application in Nuance's stable. Surprising.
If you operate on a Mac, the OSX built-in voices are decent. Not as good as Ivona's or Loquendo's but passable for ear-tests and scratch audio for review.
Although Text-to-speech software is improving, nothing replaces the emotion of a real voice. There is a definite art to capturing and then keeping the attention of the listener. As a professional voice talent that loves working on e-learning projects, Prior to my years working in voiceover - I worked in construction and had to listen to many elearning training courses. Many my co-workers would simply start playing the video and then go for coffee because they reader didn't make them interesting, or the voices were annoying, so I'm speaking from both sides of the fence.
7 Replies
Hi Scott,
There are certain engines that are worth having a look at such as Ivona and iSpeech, but still, nothing that comes close to the real thing.
Hope this helps,
Alex
Yup Ivona is pretty good. It's an annual license which I dislike but it's really good.
Is there an option in Storyline for text to speech?
Storyline doesn't support text to speech in the runtime or in the authoring tool.
To the OP's point, the best and most flexible voices I've found are Loquendo. Looks like Nuance picked them up. Neat thing about this is the emotes and the emphasis with punctuation. Haven't seen this with other TTS systems. I am not seeing a simple application in Nuance's stable. Surprising.
http://www.nuance.com/for-business/by-solution/customer-service-solutions/solutions-services/inbound-solutions/loquendo-small-business-bundle/interactive-tts-demo/index.htm
If you operate on a Mac, the OSX built-in voices are decent. Not as good as Ivona's or Loquendo's but passable for ear-tests and scratch audio for review.
Steve
Here's another one I found a couple of months back. Free and easy to use. You can feed it like an API to return MP3's:
http://tts-api.com/
@Steve, thank you for the freebie. It's nice to have something to use.
Although Text-to-speech software is improving, nothing replaces the emotion of a real voice. There is a definite art to capturing and then keeping the attention of the listener. As a professional voice talent that loves working on e-learning projects, Prior to my years working in voiceover - I worked in construction and had to listen to many elearning training courses. Many my co-workers would simply start playing the video and then go for coffee because they reader didn't make them interesting, or the voices were annoying, so I'm speaking from both sides of the fence.
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