Although these programs rely on synthesized voices of varying quality, they’re still a great way to convert your local ebooks or plain text files into a format you can listen to while commuting or running errands. Balabolka uses Microsoft’s Speech API (SAPI 4 and 5) to convert text into synthesized speech. You can tweak voices using Balabolka’s interface to change parameters such as pitch and speed. The program outputs audio in formats with extensions including MP3, WMA, OGG, WAV, AAC and AMR (probably the best format for voice). Balabolka supports subtitled text in the LRC format or in the metadata of the audio file so you can view the text (just like lyrics) on a device with a screen as the audio plays. Balabolka supports the Portable App standard, which means you can put it on a flash drive and start it on any PC without first running an installer program. As well as being able to read files in text formats including plain and rich text, Microsoft Word, and HTML, you can also use DSpeech for converting your voice into text—that’s a basic voice recognition engine built into the program. This application (like the majority of free tools of this type) uses the Microsoft Speech API to convert text into speech. DSpeech can encode to MP3, AAC, WMA, OGG, and WAV, which covers most of the popular formats in the digital audio world. It only supports files in plain-text format, but if you have a lot to convert, this program streamlines the whole process. Queue multiple files for automatic batch conversion to MP3 before choosing Start. There is no option to change voice profiles in this utility, but the settings menu offers tweaks for the pitch, speed, and volume of the synthesized speech. Although TTSReader’s file format support isn’t as rich as some other free text-to-speech applications, it converts large amounts of text quickly. It is available for all devices with online access. Android and iOS apps for TTSReader are also available. Download for:
