Text to Speech software

I use Ivona for temporary voices during review periods. It's relatively inexpensive for personal use. For commercial use it's quite a bit more expensive ($700 last I checked). I'll be moving to the built in Mac voices for my temp work - triggering voice to file from terminal. These are slightly lower quality than Ivona or Loquendo. Loquendo is quite good.

Good voices are not cheap. Most of the best ones offer a "pay as you go" program. If you're looking for a good quality voice on the cheap for commercial purposes, I haven't found one yet. I haven't found an application of narration where I'd rather use a synthetic voice than a real one other than for scratch and review.

Steve,

Thank you for your information and for your response. I really appreciate your help! Happy Wednesday!

Hi Joy,

I use the free version of Natural Reader (http://www.naturalreaders.com/index.htm) as a secondary way to proofread my writing. Don't know anything about their pricing structure, but thought I'd at least throw it out there. Good luck!

That's a great way to use TTS, Rebecca. I find it's so important to hear narrative to evaluate how well it works. I have used TTS programs this way as well but primarily use it to represent a draft of assembled narrative.

Hi Steve,

Yes, it IS a good way to evaluate the narrative. And darn if I don't pick up a mistake that I didn't catch after several re-readings by "eye."

Thank you Rebecca and Steve for your thoughts on this.

Of course, there's always the option of a real person voiceover by moi (shameless plug for myself!)

However, I do agree that TTS is great for reviewing.

Nuance - Dragon Naturally speaking: Nuance Text-to-Speech technology that reads on-screen text in human-sounding synthesized speech. (http://www.nuance.com/for-individuals/by-product/dragon-for-pc/home-version/index.htm)

CC and April,

Thank you for your help. I really do appreciate it.

We've used Ivona in the past as well. It actually sounds pretty good. Some voices are better than others. All in all not bad though.