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Best Text to Speech Online Software Tools.

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Carlos' Opinion -
Text to Speech Online Software Tools.

There is an increasing number of websites starting to use Text to Speech online software tools to generate another content format inside their websites.

Text to Speech online software tools are really useful to create different contents such as animated videos, audiobooks, or audio blog posts.

When creating an animated video, is understandable that some people either are shy to use their voices or it would be cheaper to use artificial intelligence text-to-speech voices to have a better audio.

The problem that has been time ago, was that the text-to-speech online tools available sounded very robotic.

But as technology has advanced, there were also improvements on how the text-to-speech online tools sound.

One of the projects that I wanted to give it a try and to develop different animated videos was the use of Text-to-Speech.

I found several free text-to-speech online software tools, but they actually sound pretty bad.

As I kept my research I learned more about Google Cloud Platform and AWS services for text-to-speech.

The thing was that both tools needed more advanced tech knowledge. I am not a programmer, so for me it required more time to figure it out how they work.

So eventually, I found Speechelo. It is also a text-to-speech online tool built up in AWS.

As I heard the voices of Speechelo, I was amazed.

It is an online tool that I would recommend, since it is easy to use and also the voices themself sound quite human.

I also share another text-to-speech online software tools that you could use for videos, audiobooks or WordPress.

With CyberBukit you could also build your own SaaS with Text-to-Speech from AWS. Of course, this could be helpful if you want to start a Text-to-Speech online business.

As well, there are Speaker and Voicer, both were created by the same author Merkulove, and they use Google Wavenet. 

You can get Speaker from CodeCanyon, and Voicer from Envato Elements, which in this case I would go for Envato Elements, since you could also get more resources on their subscription.

Remember, with great power comes great responsibility. As I see the advanced of AI in video and image, these tools must be used for a better world. 

text to speech online software tools

Table of Contents

What is Text-to-Speech?

In case you’ve heard of it and now want to know what text-to-speech is, you’ve come to the right article. Discover with us every little detail of this technology.

Besides, get to know the text-to-speech of Google and Amazon Polly, two great references of technology currently in constant expansion.

When we talk about text-to-speech technology, which can also be referred to as TTS, we refer to this type of artificial technology that reads digital text aloud.

Hence its associated name “read aloud technology”. 

It assumes that with the click of a button, or the touch of a finger, words typed on a computer, or any other digital device, can be converted into audio.

Regardless of the language in which they are written. 

TTS is especially helpful for children and adults who have some difficulty reading. 

However, it has been proven that it is a tool that also favors other aspects, such as writing, editing and, when used correctly, children’s attention. 

 

Types of text-to-speech tools.

The types of text-to-speech tools go hand in hand with the device that is being used and today we already have a lot of different TTS that seek to cover different spaces to give opportunities in any sense to those who need them.

Integrated text-to-speech.

Currently there are many devices that have integrated text-to-speech, among these we can quickly recognize desktop computers, laptops, smartphones regardless of the range, digital tablets, and even browsers like Google Chrome have begun to implement it.

What is the benefit of integrated TTS, the fact that people who suffer from some deficit that disables them to read fluently do not have to resort to the purchase of apps, or special software, to enjoy their favorite content.

This means monetary savings and greater inclusion.

Online Tools.

There are some websites that have this tool within them. It can usually be turned on and off according to the person’s preference and the option is always on the side of the screen.

When clicked, the system should be able to read each of the elements on the page.

There are some very good sites for people with dyslexia, where they can even have free memberships to have their favorite books read, this going towards the entertainment side.

It is just a matter of looking for these types of sites.

Text-to-speech apps.

If you have a smartphone, text-to-speech apps are always at your fingertips.

These applications often have special functions, such as color text highlighting and OCR.

Some of the most popular examples include Claro ScanPen, Office Lens and Voice Dream Reader.

You can try any of them by downloading them from your device’s app store.

We reserve the right to rank the best because it depends very much on the specific user.

Chrome Tools.

Among the relative we can place the novelty that is Chrome as a platform.

However, currently it already has different TTS functions, such as Read&Write, oriented to Google Chrome and Snap&Read Universal.

These tools can be very useful if used in the right way.

Any user can easily use them from a Chromebook, or any other computer where the Chrome browser is installed.

And be careful, these are not the only tools of the platform that help with reading.

You can discover more of them if you want to.

Text-to-speech software programs.

This category is precisely where literacy programs for desktop and laptop computers are included, among other reading and writing tools, since the vast majority of these have TTS systems for the ease of the user.

One of the most popular is perhaps the Microsoft Immersive Reader tool, in which OneNote and Word type programs can be found.

There are a lot more, which would make the list infinite at this point.

You can discover them little by little as you dig into the subject.

How and where does text-to-speech work?

The first thing to note is that text-to-speech operation expands to all personal digital devices, regardless of whether we are talking about computers, smartphones, or tablets.

Any text file can be read aloud, even those found on the web.

The voice we hear from a TTS is computer-generated, with a reading speed that can often be varied (i.e., going slower or faster depending on the user’s preference).

Similarly, the quality of the voice can also be altered, although some of them sound very human.

In some cases, depending on the specific tool, the words that are being read will also be underlined, which allows the user to focus on the text regardless of whether they are listening to it.

Another common quality of TTS tools is the fact that they have OCR (Optical Character Recognition).

This gives this type of tool the ability to read aloud the text found in the images.

What do we mean by the above, imagine that in a photograph there is one of those common street signs.

If the tool has OCR, the words on the sign, now visible in an image, will be read aloud like the rest of the content.

What is Google Wavenet?

If we take the time to focus on Google products (such as Google Assistant, Search and Maps, among others) we will notice that they have an integrated text-to-speech synthesis with a high quality being able to reproduce a natural sound.

When we talk about Google WaveNet we are referring to the neural network that was developed by Deepmind, a company acquired by Google in 2014, recognized for directly modulating sound waves, leaving aside the concatenation of fragments already recorded, as is the case with other technologies.

At the time of the WaveNet’s premiere, it could be seen that it had a large number of voice samples, so it was able to learn the characteristics of a lot of different voices.

Regardless of whether they were male or female, for example.

This is a neural network that can be trained to work in any language.

And it has even been concluded that it can generate music, so it’s an enlarged step as far as text-to-speech innovation is concerned.

Which, of course, is something we would expect from Google.

The result that a user with WaveNet can expect is synthetic voices capable of reading all of your content, but with a sound that has the ability to correctly mimic the human tones we are all familiar with on a day-to-day basis.

In fact, one aspect that has blown the minds of those who use it is that not only speech sounds are generated.

There are other details such as breathing and even the movements we make when uttering words.

Wavenet could have an easier interface for non-programmers.

Google text-to-speech WaveNet requires additional programming of their Google Cloud Services, so unfortunately it is not easy to use for basic users.

Since it is such a complex system, it is taking some time to be able to configure it in every language.

When we are only talking about languges, Wavenet has OK sounding voices, but it continues to improve.

It may seem a little hard to believe, one of the most recent and most expected releases was the Spanish mode, which saw the light in mid 2020, telling the world Google’s intention to take its Artificial Intelligence products around the globe.

It is expected that the new WaveNet voices will continue to arrive as time goes by, so that they will be able to enrich the conversational agents in any language besides english.

How long will it take for this system to reach other improved languages is still to be revealed by the company.

As the days, weeks, months and years go by, the use of the standard TTS modality, which is the synthetic female voice, is being replaced by voices that make it easier for us to familiarize ourselves with the content.

What is Amazon Polly?

Amazon Polly can be defined as a cloud service that converts text into realistic speech.

It can be used for the development of applications with the intention of creating an increase in participation and improvements in accessibility.

Within the portfolio of this Amazon service you can find different languages and a wide range of realistic voices, so that applications created with these can be used in various locations and adapt the voice that best suits the project.

When you decide to hire Amazon Polly, you will only pay for the text that is synthesized.

There is also the option of caching the speech that has been generated with this specific tool and being able to reproduce it without any additional cost.

We see a resemblance to Google’s WaveNet, because in this case we also have a series of Amazon Polly’s neural text-to-speech (NTTS) voices, which offer a revolutionary improvement in the speech quality of what is being read.

There are more and more places where we can find this Amazon service, as it is available for mobile applications, news readers, e-learning resource platforms, games, accessibility applications for people with disabilities, among any other that needs a tool of this type.

Benefits of using Amazon Polly.

High quality system. Both its neural TTS and standard TTS technology are able to enhance the ability to synthesize natural speech and feature accurate pronunciation regardless of whether it is acronym expansion, abbreviations, or date and time interpretation.

It features low latency. Fast response times are fully guaranteed with this service. This makes it one of the most viable options in those cases where the use of low latency is required, as is the case of dialog systems.

Wide support for voices and languages. It is available for dozens of languages, with real male and female voices. You will have to choose between three voices in British English, eight in the United States English, to say a stop and are numbers that are expected to be able to continue increasing with the arrival of the neural voice networks.

It is highly cost-effective. With Amazon Polly's pay-as-you-go model, there are no setup costs. You can start with few resources and increase them as the application also begins to expand its limits.

We hope you have learned a little more about text-to-speech and these two references that are making everything we find online much more accessible, and inclusive, for everyone to enjoy. 

Now we will talk about 4 online tools that could help you on your text-to-speech online projects.

What is Microsoft Azure?

One of the advantages of having Microsoft Azure Text to Speech is that it offers more than 270 neural voices across 119 languages and variants.

The voice quality of Microsoft Azure TTS are considerable high, being really close to be human like voices.

Thanks to the recent update of Microsoft Azure TTS, more languages were added such as Afrikaans, Amharic, Bangla, Persian, Filipino, Galician, Javanese, Khmer, Burmese, Somali, Sundanese, Uzbek and Zulu.

Nevertheless, also new regional voices were added, but unfortunately they are not close to be the real accents, such as the ones for the countries of Ecuador, Chile, Honduras, just to name some.

The artificial inteligence used by Microsoft Text to Speech is considerable amazing, since if we compare the normal TTS voices with the neural voices, it will be a matter of time when we will forget the robotic voices, and the neural voices will be almost indistinguishable from a real one human voice.

Benefits of using Microsoft Azure.

Human-Like Voices. Microsoft Azure has one of the most realistic artificial intelligence voices.

Variety of Accents. Microsoft Azure has more than 40 languages and a wide variety of accents of several regions across the globe.

What is IBM Watson?

One of the advantages of having IBM Watson Text to Speech is that it offers more than 270 neural voices across 119 languages and variants.

The voice quality of IBM Watson TTS are considerable high, and they are among the best voices available.

The artificial inteligence used by IBM Watson Text to Speech is considerable amazing, since if we compare the normal TTS voices with the neural voices, it will be a matter of time when we will forget the robotic voices, and the neural voices will be almost indistinguishable from a real one human voice.

Benefits of using IBM Watson.

Different voices. The sound of the voices of IBM Watson give a variety to the accents that other providers give.

Wide support for voices and languages. It is available for dozens of languages, with real male and female voices. You will have to choose between three voices in British English, eight in the United States English, to say a stop and are numbers that are expected to be able to continue increasing with the arrival of the neural voice networks.

Best Text to Speech Online Software based on AWS Polly & Google Wavenet.

1. Speechelo.

Speechelo is the best text-to-speech online software that I have found so far. 

Speechelo has the posibility to run multiple campaigns to have the different voices that are required.

The voices that you can get from Speechelo are very human like, this is the closest text-to-speech with natural voices.

Speechelo is mainly running on AWS.

As a short Speechelo Review, it is actually a very useful text-to-speech software where you can have unlimited usage when you the the one-time payments plan.

Here are some examples of the voices that you can find in Speechelo. 

2. CyberBukit.

CyberBukit is a script that you can buy in CodeCanyon so that you can run your text-to-speech Software as a Service.

You can test their tool so that you learn more about how this text-to-speech tool works out ant start your online SaaS business.

It runs using Google WaiveNet and Amazon Polly.

If you are planning to use it for yourself you can buy the regular license, and if youare planning to build your SaaS, then you will have to buy the extender license.

Take also into account that you will have to pay as well the usage of Wavenet and Polly.

3. Speaker.

Speaker Text-to-Speech WordPress plugin helps to convert your content into audio.

This tool uses Google Wavenet.

It has a batch processing that would help to create audio faster. 

It is compatible with Elementor.

Last update was on September 2020.

4. Voicer.

Voicer is another Text-to-Speech WordPress plugin, it would also help to convert text to audio.

In this plugin you will need a Google Wavenet API key to set it up in WordPress.

From the mentioned above, the easiest to use has been Speechelo, and it has a one-time fee, so you don’t have to worry much about the set ups.

5. Talkia

Talkia is a text-to-speech software released by Bryxen, which has the ability to convert something written into an audio overlay, using realistic sounds and ideal for the realization of all those projects within which voiceovers serve to save time, money and effort in the creation of different types of videos, commercials and audiobooks.

Basically, it uses Google Wavenet or Amazon Polly to convert scripts to text-to-speech.

In this sense, by using Talkia it is possible to complement videos so that they sell better, that is to say, that they have a higher conversion potential, thus increasing the profitability of your business.

Moreover, it is an easy-to-use software, with which it is possible to create striking professional voiceovers in a short time. It is as simple as typing the text in its editor, then choose the voice you want to use and click to preview it.

You can also customize your creation by adding a musical background and then choose to export your voice-over. Talkia takes care of creating it in mp3 audio format, compatible with different types of digital devices and thus add it to any video you want to use as part of your business promotional activities.

It even allows you to record a speech and play it back at any time or a presentation for a group of clients; regulating its quality and tone, so that it is clear, precise and pleasant for those who listen to it.

Best Multi-Cloud Text to Speech Online Software

1. TTS.Barrazacarlos.com

Our Text to Speech software is the bridge between the user and multi-cloud providers such as Amazon, Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure and IBM. 

At our Text to Speech Software website you have the freedom to select among more than 60 languages and more than 600 accents.

As well, another advantage is that you can select Neural voices, which are artificial intelligence voices that are getting closer to sound like real human male and female voices.

Best Text to Speech Online Software Video.

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