AI Voices

very good
key review info
application features
  • Fast Conversion Speed: Reading and Converting is performed directly without any temporary files, and thus enables high converting speed and economy of hard disk space;
  • (3 more, see all...)

As the computers' involvement in our human everyday (and even every night) lives constantly grows, so do the new range of capabilities these PCs have to comply with. Speaking computers have been a Sci-Fi related field for many years but now they represent a "futuresque" matter no more: people have long ago made PCs speak - now they try to make them speak as nice and human as possible. Once with the expansion of the "speaking computers'" deal of implication in both our work and daily home-routines, new uses have been developed for this - let's face it - handy technology. From voice-activated processes, both belonging strictly to a computer and to other generic activities, to text and documents reading, the new "toy" seems to gain more and more importance.

Nevertheless, this is one of the technologies which will doubtlessly be "en vogue" from now on as it is simply much easier to control a large number of applications and processes with your own voice, rather than actually press keys, learn new languages, new OS-enhancements and so on.

The Looks

"Before I say anything" I'll say that Text to Speech Maker definitely looks Mac-like: a very noticeable liking for square, very "Clean" shapes and small (but very eye-catching) details make this program look as if it has been strayed and the fact that it runs on Win XP is simply by chance. The grey, "polished metal"-like background, as well as the fine black trimming at the edges of both main window and separate fields in it simply make you think about the Mac OS X.

The buttons and icons have been drawn very well and one can instantly see that the graphic designers have paid a lot of attention to the details and generic appearance of the Text to Speech Maker: the icons and command buttons are looking very good, as hi-res pictures rather than mere icons and are very intuitive because of both graphic depicting and the text underneath each.

The GUI of the Text to Speech Maker is very tidy and even a person who has never used such a software before will be able to figure things out in just minutes. The upper part of the fullscreen-able window has been reserved for the direct-command buttons such as "Read aloud" or "Convert"; needless to say Text to Speech Maker does not sport extensive menus, as the functions of this software are very specific.

The largest amount of room has been dedicated to the screen where the text to be read will be either displayed or properly written. In fact, as one maximizes the Text to Speech Maker window in fullscreen mode, the only thing which actually enlarges is this text-dedicated area, while the rest of the elements remain with the same proportions. Next to this area, there is another smaller one, especially for browsing the text files you have chosen to be read: accessing them is quite easy, as well as actually browsing them - you just click and scroll. I told you it's simple and convenient!

Finally, the few menus are at least very intelligible, even though I really thought of saying that they were rather designed for complete idiots, in a good way, of course. Overall, the Text to Speech Maker has an extremely easy to understand and use GUI, looking very, very good (Mac heritage, maybe?), requiring little PC or "voice-computing" knowledge for operating it in just perfect conditions; definitely a very high mark from me for the way Text to Speech Maker looks!

The Works

The technology upon which a software like Text to Speech Maker has been built is neither new nor secret: it's just a very vast field and the research for making PCs speak a good human language is costly and truly hi-tech. The first "speaking" computers appeared many years ago, but these days, the way PCs speak is getting better and better. I can hardly wait for the day when software like Text to Speech Maker will be able to read not only from plain text, but also from PDF and similar file types! Some friends told me that this is almost impossible, but I argued that such a thing will surely "come in" in a much shorter time than both they and even I expect.

So, what Text to Speech Maker actually does is read the content of text files and allow you to save the resulting audio stream in different formats such as WAV, VOX or MP3. Thus, you can not only listen to text being read, but also have it recorded on your hard disk for future use or simple and easy transport wherever need be. All three featured output formats have numerous presets and they are fit for either local use on your PC (the higher-quality ones) or to carry/playback from mobile devices such as MP3 Players or mobile/smartphones.

The main vocal character is the now well-known Microsoft Sam, the traditional voice of the Win XP narrator and protagonist of many similar applications developed around the world. Unfortunately, unlike other softwares which have 5 or more characters, Text to Speech Maker sports only Sam's voice and all the settings are related to reading speed and volume, with no pitch control. The controllable pitch is a very useful feature when you adjust the reading speed, as sometimes Sam's reading could easily become unintelligible at high speeds: thus pitch-controlling the voice can prevent some of the mumbling or squirrelly tonalities.

Operating the Text to Speech Maker is quite easy: you either write down your own text in the dedicated area or choose to load a text file in the application, so it will display the text content and read it upon your request. It's very cool that you can have both (freshly-written text and formerly-saved text documents) and more: you can most easily switch between them by clicking the corresponding tab.

The Text to Speech Maker has also a volume indicator which displays in real-time the volume-level of Sam's reading, so you can develop a better idea on what's more to be set up before you actually save the audio version of the text. As I have said before a couple of times, the Text to Speech Maker is one easy to use program and anyone could learn to work with it in just moments.

The final considerations about the Text to Speech Maker are some very cool things. I was very pleasantly surprised when I found out that Microsoft Sam will recognize numbers up to hundreds of quadrillions and it will also recognize the date. I have run some tests to see how far Text to Speech Maker can count and also tried to trick it with different numbers representing the date: I was delighted to see Text to Speech Maker speaking to me about "November" and trillions... Now I can say it's also smart :))

The Good

There are nice things about Text to Speech Maker: the three-file format output options with lots of quality presets, the nice recognition of numbers and date and the awesomely easy operation.

The Bad

It may be the price that could set aback the users...otherwise I have seen nothing bad.

The Truth

I guess that soon, almost every PC will run a version of either Text to Speech Maker or some similar program...this is surely the future and we can't change it :)

While you download and think of the first phrases to load in Text to Speech Maker, please take a look at the screenshots below:

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user interface 5
features 3
ease of use 5
pricing / value 3


final rating 4
Editor's review
very good