Menu
I’m not hearing impaired but that doesn’t prevent me from taking advantage of certain VoiceOver features on my iPhone. For instance, I sometimes use Speak Selection to get iOS to read a book to me as I’m surfing the web, or doing something else.
Being a non-native English speaker, I also rely on that feature to have my iPhone read aloud words and phrases whenever I’m unsure about their correct pronunciation, which is a lot of help—especially with the adjustable pitch and speaking rate.
Starting with iOS 8, a number of options for the Siri voices you can use for the VoiceOver, Speak Screen and Speak Selection features became available. This tutorial explains how to choose a voice for Speak Screen and Speak Selection and adjust voices for VoiceOver.
How to select VoiceOver Siri voices
Text to Speech on Mac If you learn better when you can hear what you’re reading or writing, Text to Speech can help by adding an auditory component to books, websites, or homework assignments. Highlight any text and hear it read aloud in more than 70 voices across 42 languages. 'TextSpeak Embedded Text-To-Speech modules series convert ASCII text to a natural, clear voice with unlimited vocabulary. The small footprint, plug-in solution accepts wide range of input data to generate real-time speech for Security Transit Medical and Industry.
1) Go to Settings → General → Accessibility → VoiceOver → Speech → Voices.
2) Depending on the language your device is set to use, you can now choose between the various dialects to use with the VoiceOver feature. The selected voice will be downloaded to your device when it’s connected to a Wi-Fi network. After the download completes, your device will automatically install the voice.
The Default option is the compact voice pack, but you can also select a higher-quality voice, labeled as Enhanced, which will give you a better sounding text-to-speech at the expense of storage space (enhanced-quality voices can cost you several hundred megabytes of storage space).
To add voices for other languages, tap Add New Language and select the language and dialect you want.
- Re: Any good text-to-speech voices besides NeoSpeech? Beefstew22 Sep 13, 2018 1:13 AM ( in response to lizroy ) Hey all — I work at an AI research lab in Seattle where we've built a text-to-speech engine that produces speech that's nearly indistinguishable from the human voice.
- If your OS of choice is Mac OS X, and all you need is basic but extremely solid text to speech (TTS) functionality, you don’t even have to bother with a third party software application, as the OS’ native Text to Speech feature has you covered.
- It is a simpler option than VoiceOver to use for reading e-texts for people with learning disabilities. To start, open the System Preferences panel under the Apple icon and click on Dictation and Speech. Select the Text to Speech tab. Check the option “Speak selected text when the key is.
If you want to adjust the rate of speech the voice uses (uses for speed-reading long passages of text), move the Speaking Rate slider on the VoiceOver screen.
Tip: You can enable multiple voices and switch between Compact and Enhanced Quality without needing to download the voice again.
About using natural sounding Alex voice
Alex is my favorite US English voice (if you’re using English on your device, choose English (U.S.) → Alex).
Note to international users whose device is using another language by default: before using Alex, you must add English as a Rotor Language by going to Settings → General → Accessibility → VoiceOver → Speech → Add New Language.
Next, select English (U.S) from the Rotor Languages list, and now tap Alex.
Alex does sound great, but also weighs in at 869MB, so think twice before enabling Alex if you’re concerned about space.
RELATED:How to get your iPhone or iPad to read books to you
How to remove VoiceOver Siri voices
1) Go to Settings → General → Accessibility → VoiceOver → Speech.
2) Swipe from right to left on the voice and tap Delete, or tap Edit and then select the voices you want to remove permanently from your iOS device.
How to choose a voice for Speak Screen and Speak Selection
![Mac os speech to text Mac os speech to text](https://static.makeuseof.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/mac-talk-options.png)
1) Go to Settings → General → Accessibility → Speech.
2) Enable Speak Selection and Speak Screen.
3) Now tap Voices on the Speech screen and choose the default voice and dialect you would like both Speak Screen and Speak Selection to use. If you are using the Alex voice, make sure to enable it for VoiceOver, Speak Screen and Speak Selection.
Siri voices and storage space
The space allocated to the downloaded Siri voices is lumped into the ‘Other’ iOS category, which can be seen in iTunes’ Summary pane. In addition to Siri voices, your ‘Other’ iOS storage also includes device settings, system data and cached files that iOS creates when streaming or viewing content like music, videos and photos.
RELATED:How to decrease ‘Other’ storage on iOS
If your device is running low on storage, you should remove high-quality Siri voices and make sure that you’re not using multiple voices, or enhanced-quality ones, for VoiceOver, Speak Selection and Speak Screen features.
Have you tried using Alex and if so, what did you think of it?
Your how-to submissions are accepted at [email protected] or visit us on Twitter.
Active3 years, 6 months ago
I tried several text-to-speak programs (on linux) such as
Fetival
, eSpeak
, etc; but the voice in all of them is very robotic. There are voice templates to change voice from male to female, but the problem in them all is that the system read each word separately, instead of starting to read a sentence.Is there any advanced program or trick to read a text with a relatively natural voice?
The current artificial voices cannot be listened for a long text (too boring as the listener cannot concentrate).
user 99572 is fine2,99333 gold badges2525 silver badges3939 bronze badges
Apple Text To Speech Voices
GooglebotGooglebot46733 gold badges1010 silver badges2424 bronze badges
closed as off-topic by Mokubai♦Mar 1 '16 at 18:32
This question appears to be off-topic. The users who voted to close gave this specific reason:
![Better Voices For Mac Text To Speech Better Voices For Mac Text To Speech](/uploads/1/2/6/0/126081909/337585633.jpg)
Mac Text To Speech Generator
- 'Questions seeking product, service, or learning material recommendations are off-topic because they become outdated quickly and attract opinion-based answers. Instead, describe your situation and the specific problem you're trying to solve. Share your research. Here are a few suggestions on how to properly ask this type of question.' – Mokubai
6 Answers
I think you mean Text-To-Speech (TTS) since you are talking about a robotic voice. TTS engines take written text and voice it back, whereas speech recognition engines understand human speech and convert it into a machine readable format. Loquendo has the most natural sounding TTS engine I have heard. They have a version for Linux. They have an interactive demo you can play with to hear how great it sounds. There TTS engine can take special characters in the text to do things like provide emphasis on phrases or even make the voice laugh or cry. Not many TTS engines do this.
Kevin JunghansKevin Junghans
After weeks of researching the same question I found the voices from Ivona (here) and Loquendo (here and here) to be the best TTS voices available for Windows. Only Ivona lists prices on their website though. To actually use the TTS voices on your Windows PC I recommend Balabolka (free), Ivona MiniReader (free) or Ivona Reader.
Mac Text To Speech Online
Next check out Clearly from Evernote. It is a browser extension currently only available for Google Chrome. It provides TTS for premium customers only. The (iSpeech powered) TTS voice is not as good as Ivona's or Loquendo's but it gives you a nice reader view on blog posts/articles by stripping away distracting page elements. You can also set it to auto-highlight the currently read word!
Check out ReadSpeaker too which can be implemented by website owners into their site. Readspeaker provides auto-highlighting of the currently read paragraph/word, auto-scrolling and the ability to change the TTS speed.
[Edit:] There are some free useful Google Chrome extensions that are powered by iSpeech as well.
MarkMark
You can buy a ready made device . http://www.textspeak.com makes human sounding text to speech products, boards and boxes. They have 20 languages and simple are the best sounding TTS you can find.
There is no license or development...just buy the box if you only need one voice output.
(This is NOT a SW solution, but we used it in a paging systems... 5 minutes to install)
From their site
'TextSpeak Embedded Text-To-Speech modules series convert ASCII text to a natural, clear voice with unlimited vocabulary. The small footprint, plug-in solution accepts wide range of input data to generate real-time speech for Security Transit Medical and Industry.
John BJohn B
I don't know if it's open source, but Google's TTS is free, and is very natural sounding in comparison to Samsung's and Microsoft Anna.
jonsca3,7241414 gold badges3030 silver badges4545 bronze badges
SheogorathSheogorath
Cepstral seems to provide reasonable prices for text to speech voices. You might want to check them out as an option.
thatidiotguythatidiotguy
When it comes to having a good sound, what you really want to look for is not the text to speech software, but the good voices: they are a separate subject.
The same voice will work accross different software. The best one I know of at the moment is named Audrey. A female voice with a british accent. Although I have to change most ' that are on the text with copy-past to one from the keyboard, it is worth it for an almost realistic sounding voice. I also have to place a pausing symbol (.,: or such) at the end of titles so she doesn't keep talking right through them. I still think it's the best voice I have so far. But I wouldn't mind finding the one from that weather channel that was mentioned ealier:
'NOAA weather radio broadcasts are EXCELLENT. I would not object to listening to that program read a long text.– Jeanne Pindar'
Here is a website which has sample voices on it: including Audrey. I have others, but I have only used her for a long time now.
PS: you have to pay for the better voices, but they will work on free text-to-speech software afterwards... at least the one I have. (Free Natural Reader)
Voice Sample web page:http://www.digitalfuturesoft.com/attnaturalvoices.php
Art GArt G