Thread: speech synthesis kits

Speech synthesis is the artificial production of human speech. A computer system used for this purpose is called a speech synthesizer, and can be implemented in software or hardware. A text-to-speech (TTS) system converts normal language text into speech.

Most of the text-to-speech softwares can read text files in format of .txt and other file formats with natural voices using various voice engines. The text-to-speech voice engine on Vista is Microsoft Anna, and Microsoft Sam on the Windows XP. Vista users can hear a very clear voice of Anna, XP users would think the voice of Microsoft Sam is poor, but they can get other company's vocie engines which are more clear.


The narrator has been shipped with Windows XP and Vista. However some users choose panopreter which is a freeware. It is an easy-to-use tool which reads files, words you type and converts files into wave and mp3 audio files, so you can listen to them with a MP3 player. It's a effective way to improve listening, somehow they are educational softwares for language learning.

Hey thanks for the information. But is there any software that can read pdf files also and convert them into mp3 formats?

There are softwares that read PDF such as textaloud, but they are not free.

However, you can save the PDF file into text file using Adobe PDF reader, then use panopreter to read the text file and convert it to MP3. For a better reading, you'd better run panopreter on Windows Vista machine.

Its a good software, but what is the point of it! It maybe useful to many people, which is why im asking whats so good about it, apart from the fact that it reads out text, is it the fact that you can not be bothered to read or is it something else?

Could be of major help for people working with visually impaired persons.