Convert Mp3 Audio Books To Ipod
Text-to-Speech Software: How To Save Money By Creating Your Own Audio Books On Your Computer
It is now possible to create realistic sounding computer-generated voice. In the past computer voices sounded robotic. Today's high quality speech engines are capable of some impressive results. Computers can now produce speech with natural inflection which is so important in understanding human conversation. In this article I will show you the tools that I use to create an unlimited number of audio books. I download these books to my iPod and listen to them wherever I am.
The audio books produced with this method are more than acceptable in my opinion. I have had several people listen to the books that I have produced. Most of them agree the speech quality is good enough. None of the speech engines are perfect. Not every word will convert in an understandable way. This does cause some problems, however most of the time the context of the word in the sentence is sufficient for understanding the word.
Click this link to listen to this article spoken from an mp3 created with this method.
Before I get to the tools used to create these audio books I would like to give you some advice on where to find books that can be converted. If you're interested in the classics there is one website where you can download thousands of e-books. The Gutenberg Project (www.gutenberg.org) has an online website that archives thousands of free books. These books are offered in plain text which makes them easy to convert to speech. There are also several authors online who make copies of their books available in PDF format. These books can usually be purchased cheaper than the printed version. Doing a Google search for short stories will also find results which might interest you. I also copy and paste articles from online content producers such as Associated Content which allows me to listen to interesting articles away from my computer. Blogs are another source for interesting articles that can be copied and pasted into the text-to-speech application. Any text that you find interesting to read can make great audio listening.
I have tried several of the text-to-speech applications. The one that I consider best for creating audio books is TextAloud from NextUp.com. The features included with this application are outstanding for creating audio books. TextAloud will convert text to speech at 150 times real-time. This means that hundreds of pages of text can be converted to speech in just a matter of minutes. You have the ability to speed up or slow down the pace of the reading. This can greatly enhance intelligibility. TextAloud allows you to import text files, Word files, PDF files and HTML files. You can export your finished books as WAV files, WMA files or MP3 files. TextAloud currently cost $29.95.
To create high quality audio books you will need to purchase and download additional voice packs. NextUp.com sells the best text-to-speech voices available. My personal favorite voice is Daniel from Nuance RealSpeak. This is a British English male voice that costs an additional $45 above the cost of TextAloud. You can listen to samples of all the voices on their website. I also have two of the NeoSpeech voices. These voices are acceptable and they are only $35 apiece. The Nuance voices do a better job of formatting the text. Listen to the samples and make your decision based on what sounds best to your ears.
By Steve Good -
My profession is in the electronics field. I am also a part time freelance photographer. I have been an avid woodworker for over 20 years. I also have
many years of computer experience. Next page: Audio Book Distribution
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