The best free text to speech software 2. In years gone by, text to speech software was rather expensive, but these days there are excellent options free of charge and were here to help you find the very best tools that will make converting written documents to audio files as easy as possible. Text to speech software can be enormously helpful for anyone whos visually impaired, or has a condition like dyslexia that makes reading on screens tricky. It can also help overcome language barriers for people who read a language but dont speak it, or are in the process of learning. Text to speech software is also ideal if you want to listen to a document while doing something else, if you find it easier to retain information youve heard, or if you want to sense check something youve written. Microsoft Text Speech Voice Software' title='Microsoft Text Speech Voice Software' />Microsoft Sam Speech Articulation Module is a commonly shipped SAPI 5 voice. In addition, Microsoft Office XP and Office 2003 installed LH Michael and Michelle voices. Research in speech recognition, language modeling, language understanding, spoken language systems and dialog systems. Overview Our goal is to fundamentally advance. Here are the best free tools for reading text aloud either individual paragraphs or whole documents. Balabolkas flexibility makes it the best free text to speech software around. If you struggle to read text on a screen, its the perfect choice. TextToSpeechVoices.png' alt='Microsoft Text Speech Voice Software' title='Microsoft Text Speech Voice Software' />Save text as a spoken audio file, with customizable voices. Excellent file format support. Lots of voices to choose from. Bookmarking tools. There are a couple of ways to use Balabolkas free text to speech software you can either copy and paste text into the program, or you can open a number of supported file formats including DOC, PDF, and HTML in the program directly. In terms of output you can use SAPI 4 complete with eight different voices to choose from, SAPI 5 with two, or the Microsoft Speech Platform if you download and install the necessary files. Whichever route you choose, you can adjust the speech, pitch and volume of playback to create custom voice. In addition to reading words aloud, this free text to speech software can also save narrations as audio files in a range of formats including MP3 and WAV. For lengthy documents you can create bookmarks to make it easy to jump back to a specific location and there are excellent tools on hand to help you to customize the pronunciation of words to your liking. With all these features to make life easier when reading text on a screen isnt an option, Balabolka is best free text to speech software around. Natural Reader works with pretty much any document type, and even includes OCR for scanned text. Free text to speech software with its own web browser. Built in OCRChoice of interfaces. Built in browser. Natural Reader is a free text to speech tool that can be used in a couple of ways. The first option is to load documents into its library and have them read aloud from there. This is a neat way to manage multiple files, and the number of supported file types is impressive, including ebook formats. Theres also OCR, which enables you to load up a photo or scan of text, and have it read to you. The second option takes the form of a floating toolbar. In this mode, you can highlight text in any application and use the toolbar controls to start and customize text to speech. This means you can very easily use the feature in your web browser, word processor and a range of other programs. Theres also a built in browser to convert web content to speech more easily. Word. Talk is another highly customizable text to speech tool, and does an excellent job with Microsoft Word documents. An extension that adds text to speech to your word processor. Integrates with Microsoft Word. Programs Offered By The North Carolina Department Of Community Corrections on this page. Customizable voices. A little unattractive. Developed by the University of Edinburgh, Word. Talk is a toolbar add on for Word that brings customizable text to speech to Microsoft Word. It works with all editions of Word and is accessible via the toolbar or ribbon, depending on which version youre using. The toolbar itself is certainly not the most attractive youll ever see, appearing to have been designed by a child. Nor are all of the buttons functions very clear, but thankfully theres a help file on hand to help. Theres no getting away from the fact that Word. Talk is fairly basic, but it does support SAPI 4 and SAPI 5 voices, and these can be tweaked to your liking. The ability to just read aloud individual words, sentences or paragraphs is a particularly nice touch. You also have the option of saving narrations, and there are a number of keyboard shortcuts that allow for quick and easy access to frequently used options. Copy a chunk of text to your clipboard and Zabawares handy text to speech function will save it as an audio file for later. A great choice for converting text from websites to speech. Converts text from the clipboard. Good file format support. Voices are quite expensive. Despite its basic looks, Zabaware Text to Speech Reader has more to offer than you might first think. You can open numerous file formats directly in the program, or just copy and paste text. Alternatively, as long as you have the program running and the relevant option enables, Zabaware Text to Speech Reader can read aloud any text you copy to the clipboard great if you want to convert words from websites to speech as well as dialog boxes that pop up. Zabaware Text to Speech Reader can also convert text files to WAV format. Unfortunately the selection of voices is limited, and the only settings you can customize are volume and speed unless you burrow deep into settings to fiddle with pronunciations. Additional voices are available for a US2. AU3. 0, which seems rather steep, holding it back from a higher place in our list. It might be basic, but Panopretor is still a solid choice if your text to speech needs are simple. Easy text to speech, but you might find its limitations frustrating. Quick and simple to use. Limited file format support. Few customization options. Panopreter Basic lives up to its name, delivering free text to speech conversion without frills. The list of supported file types is a little disappointing no DOCX, for instance, as is the level of voice customization. Aside from choosing a language, volume and speed, theres nothing to adjust. When you compare this to the range of personalization that can be achieved in other text to speech program, its a little disappointing. You do have the option of converting text to WAV format so you can listen to it when on the move, but its a shame to find that MP3 isnt supported. The dual pane layout of the program isnt particularly pleasant to work with either it feels like there is a lot of space wasted unless you happen to be both listening to text to speech conversion there and then, and also converting to audio file. It gets the job done, but there are better text to speech tools out there. Text to Speech Voice Download Guide.