Forum Discussion
Text to speech software recommendations?
Hi,
I'm looking for recommendations on good (free/cheap) text to speech software with a couple of different voice options and the abilitly to save as audio files such as .MP3 or .WAV that I can import to Articulate Storyline.
Any recommendations?
Many thanks!
Elena
60 Replies
Thanks for the reference Manuel!
iSpeech recently launched word packages for eLearning and presentations and I thought you may find it useful: https://www.ispeech.org/static
If anyone has any questions I can help. Feel free to email me at anna@ispeech.org
Best regards,
Anna
Thanks everyone for popping in to help Elena out here
- Hi Paul: could you share details about how you used Audacity to record and save the audio? I tried doing this and found the resulting audio to have a lot of echoing in it. I set my microphone up to the computer speaker. Is there a better approach?
Paul S. said:
Owen,
I use Audacity to record and save the audio.
Hi Diane! I'm not sure if Paul is subscribed to this thread, so you may need to send him a PM.
I wanted to welcome you to E-Learning Heroes though
There is a setting in Windows to record an internal channel. You shouldn't need to use your microphone. Wrote up some instructions for setting this up a few weeks ago. Hope it's helpful.
http://community.articulate.com/forums/p/37657/203219.aspx#203219
Steve
Cool, thanks Steve
Diane,
Steve is right on the money as usual. The quality of the TTS is as good as many of the pricey services out there. Good Luck.
Thank you everyone for your responses. Unfortunately I don't have the "stereo mix" option on my Windows 7 machine after I selected the "show disabled devices' option.
Diane Rhodes-Michaely said:
Thank you everyone for your responses. Unfortunately I don't have the "stereo mix" option on my Windows 7 machine after I selected the "show disabled devices' option.
I'm also on windows 7 and found that the option was listed as Rec. Playback . I also discovered that my sound card driver was outdated so it would not let me select it when using apps like Replay. Now that I've updated my audio drivers, it works like a charm.As an alternative, you can actually use google translate to create MP3 files from text for free.
1) Type or paste the text into the translation window. (Note: you don't need to actually translate the text to another language.)
2) Click the listen button in the window where the "to be translated" text sits.
3) Look in your browser window cookies folder for the mp3 file google just created to play back your text.
4) Move and rename the file so you can find it later.
This works for me as long as I am outside of my company's firewall (which blocks the audio cookie).
The downside is, you can't select your voice. The upside is it is quick, easy, and free.
If you need more info, I have a screenr I recorded some time ago: https://player.vimeo.com/video/204928666
Thanks Owen for pointing Diane in the right direction regarding Windows 7 and sharing that helpful screenr here! Who doesn't love a free option?
