Amazon Kindle, the most popular e-reader, allows you to store and read e-books wherever you go. In addition, it also offers the wireless access to the Internet and the Kindle Store that you can purchase and download more e-books directly to your device.
From Kindle 2, an amazing Text-To-Speech, generally abbreviated as TTS, feature allows traditional e-books to be read out loud, essentially turning your books into audio books. The TTS function will also allow you to listen to an audio version of magazines, newspaper articles, documents and even blogs. More and more Kindle users realized it's a very useful function of the Kindle.
Regrettably, there are several limitations on the Kindle's TTS feature.
1) Not every book on your Kindle can be read aloud because publishers may disable the feature for their books.
2) The quality of the voices is not very good. We expect humanlike natural-sounding voices, but the Kindle's voices are robotic.
3) There are only two voices available for selection: a male and a female voice.
4) No voices of other languages except English.
5) It's inconvenient for long-term users of PC.
Fortunately, there is a similar Text-To-Speech technology that avoids all the above limitations on personal computers. All you need to do is just download and install a piece of software, then immediately your PC will be a talking computer that much better than Amazon Kindle!
Text-To-Speech software allows you to seamlessly convert any type of text into natural-sounding speech or even MP3 audio files. You can listen on your PC directly or create audio files for use on portable devices like iPods, Pocket PCs and CD players.
Support Various Text File Formats
Most TTS software can open and play Word Documents, Emails, Web Pages, PDF Files and any other text files directly. Additionally, the Watch Clipboard feature is a universal function that allows you to get and hear the text from any other application.
Better and More Speech Voices
Nowadays, on the Internet, there are a large number of high-quality speech voices available across multiple languages, including American English, British English, Spanish, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Russian, etc. Most of these voices are compatible with popular TTS software. And you may also purchase the famous AT&T Natural Voices and experience and best natural-sounding computer synthesized speech.
More Customizable and More Controls
In the Amazon Kindle's Read-to-Me feature, you can only increase or decrease the speed of the speech. By comparison, PC's TTS software allows you adjust speed, pitch, volume, accent and even custom pronunciation. Additionally, by inserting the advanced speech control tags, you can enhance the speech synthesis technology to a new level. For example, in the same article, you can play the first paragraph with a male voice and play the second paragraph with a female voice, no clicks, no delay, just like read out smoothly with a same voice.
You may also find more accessory features in Text-To-Speech software, such as the speech reminder, speech alarm and batch converter, etc. All of these features will make your life less stressful, more productive, and more enjoyable!
Thomas Carson is a text to speech technology enthusiast and expert. Text to speech technology enables any PC user to convert any written text like emails, web pages, Word documents, and PDF files into spoken words. With the help of text to speech technology, you can also easily convert any written text into audio files such as MP3 or WAV, so that you can store them into your portable MP3 player and listen to them as you go about your other tasks at home or at work.