Turn any text document or web page into an audio file Shares In years gone by, text to speech software was rather expensive, but these days there are excellent text to speech tools available free.
June 2017: a key component for these instructions is no longer actively maintained, so these instructions are no longer valid for Modern Mac configurations.
I listen to podcasts. I watch videos. But more than anything I read and write. That’s just how I roll.
- NaturalReader is a text-to-speech software for personal use. This easy-to-use software with natural-sounding voices can read to you any text such as Microsoft Word files, webpages, PDF files, and E-mails.
- How to Convert Text Into a Spoken Audio File in Mac OS X. The Text to Spoken Audio feature is enabled by default in modern versions of Mac OS X, including 10.7 Lion, 10.8 Mountain Lion, 10.9 Mavericks, El Capitan, and Yosemite.
- When converting a document into an audio file, Text Speaker can play an MP3 music file in the background along with the text it reads. Background music adds a real professional touch! Since Text Speaker has word processing features, you can create and edit documents without the need for any other program.
- How to use dictation on mac,How to convert audio to text on mac for free, Itechpro • Duration: 1:53 • Size: 1.72 MB. Download Play. How to convert text to audio on mac for free,mac tips and tricks,text to audio on mac easy step.
Frequently I want to save an audio snippet or video clip for future reference. Sure I could save the source media file, if I had unlimited disk space. But what I usually do is keep a link to the original source and text synopsis of the snippet. That both saves on storage and makes future searches for that particular item simpler.
If you’re like me, you really want the original text more than a synopsis. It take s a bit of extra effort, but I have a nice solution that uses only a Mac and open source software. Read below for instructions on converting an MP3 audio file to a text document.
The Basics of Configuring Your Mac to Transcribe .MP3 Audio
Here’s what you need:
- The original media (.mp3 file, for example)
- Soundflower. Soundflower is an application that creates a virtual audio channel and directs audio input and output to physical or virtual devices.
- Audacity. Audacity is a free application for recording and editing sounds.
- TextEdit.app. TextEdit is the default text editor/word processor that is included in Mac OS X.
Follow the instructions on the developer websites to get all of the software installed and working on your system. Once you have the software installed, the next step is to configure your Mac to use Soundflower for dictation.
- Open System Preferences and click on “Dictation & Speech”
- Select the Dictation tab
- Select “Soundflower (2ch)” as the dictation input source
- Click Dictation to “On”
- Tick the “Use Enhanced Dictation” box
Your Mac is ready for dictation. When dictation is turned on in TextEdit (or a another word processing app), your Mac will transcribe sound from the Soundflower input source.
Getting Your Audio and Text Files Ready
Next, you need to queue up the audio file in Audacity and direct output to Soundflower. For those who are new to Audacity, this will be the trickiest step. But relax, you don’t need to learn much about Audacity beyond deciding what section of sound to play and how to select the audio output from the default speakers to Soundflower.
- Launch Audacity
- Import your audio file into audacity (File–> Import, or simply drag the file into the center of the Audacity screen.)
- Click the play button to give it a listen, then click stop once your confident you have the right sound clip/transcription area.
- Choose Audacity –> Preferences –> Devices. Under playback, choose “Soundflower (2ch)” to switch the output from the onboard speakers to Soundflower. Click “OK”
![Text speaker free Text speaker free](/uploads/1/2/6/2/126297464/418723028.png)
With Audacity and your sound file queued up, its time to turn your attention to TextEdit.
- Launch TextEdit
- Create a “New Document”
- You may want to add some meta data to the document, such as the podcast name, episode #, publish date and URL, to go along with the key transcript.
- Position the cursor in the file where you want the transcript to appear.
And … Action!
It’s time to start audio playback and dictation transcription. Here both sequence and timing are important:
- In Audacity, move the scrubber start location 10-15 seconds before the key transcription area.
- Press “Play.” The scrubber and meters will start moving, though you won’t hear any sound. The audio signal is going to Soundflower instead of to the speakers.
- Put focus on Text edit and position the cursor where you want the transcription to begin.
- Select Edit –> Start Dictation. (or use the hot key combination, Fn Fn). A microphone icon with a “Done” button will appear to the left of your document.
- Text will start appearing in the document. It will likely lag by about 3-5 seconds.
- After approximately 30 seconds press the “done” button. Transcription will continue until complete.
This is the fun part: watch as transcription happens in real time right in the document window. Look Ma, no hands!
And now you have the original text (and most likely a few errors) as text to save. In the future you can easily search and retrieve the information.
An Excellent Alternative: Google Docs Voice Typing
While the solution above works great for offline work, one alternative with a lot of promise is Google Docs. The Voice Typing feature work much like the dictation service in Mac OS. It has the crowdsourcing advantages and privacy disadvantages of other Google products. If you’re OK with that, I found Voice Typing to do an very good job with accuracy and it can go longer that Mac OS dictation.
Text Speaker For Mac Pro
To use Google Voice Typing, follow all of the steps above with Soundflower, Dictation preferences and configuring Audacity. Instead of using TextEdit, you’ll want to start the Chrome browser and create a Google Doc. Once you are in document, Select Tools –> Voice typing
The user interface and process of starting and stopping transcription is the same as with TextEdit.
Dictation and Transcription Limitations
This process sets you well on you way to the goal of a high fidelity audio transcription. But it will be short of perfect. Here’s what you can do to go from good to perfect:
- Understand that Mac OS dictation transcription works for a maximum of 30 seconds at a time. If you need longer, you may want to use an alternate technology such as Dragon.
- Audio playback needs to start before dictation/transcription begins in TextEdit. TextEdit needs to be in focus for dictation to work. If you set the Audacity scrubber a few seconds ahead of target snippet, you’ll be fine.
- Transcription cannot intuit punctuation. You’ll need to add that after the fact.
- If you have multiple speakers or a noisy background, you may need to complete one additional step of creating a pristine audio file to work from. This can be done by listening to the sound through headphones and speaking the text into an audio recorder. Use the recording of your voice to drive the transcription.
In years gone by, text to speech software was rather expensive, but these days there are excellent text to speech tools available free of charge. We're 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 who's 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 don't 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 you've heard, or if you want to sense-check something you've written.
Here's our pick of the best free text to speech software for reading either individual paragraphs or whole documents aloud.
You would use this on already existing numbers. Heading 2 cell style in excel. The # sign and the zero have to add up to the number of digits in your cell.
1. Balabolka
Save text as a spoken audio file, with customizable voices
Lots of voices to choose from
There are a couple of ways to use Balabolka's 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 isn't an option, Balabolka is best free text to speech software around.
2. Natural Reader
Free text to speech software with its own web browser
Download and install Google Text-to-speech in PC and you can install Google Text-to-speech 3.23596 in your Windows PC and Mac OS. Google Text-to-speech is developed by Google LLC and listed under TOOLS. Features: - New design & user interface. - Save your speech to mp3, m4a, wav, and/or txt file. - Speech SliderBar control. - In Windows 10 build 14393 or later, now you can play speech in Background (due to windows limitation). But for earlier version you can try my workaround, type your speech => save to mp3 file => play with music player (eg. Hi guys, first time poster here. I'm looking for a way to use the male TTS voice from mac computers (the one used in 'Satisfaction' by Benny Benassi or 'Fitter Happier' by Radiohead) on a windows computer. Text to speech. OSX makes it simple to listen to any text you highlight. Cepstral also works with Apple's screen-access software VoiceOver. Cepstral Personal Voices run on Mac OS X versions 10.6 (Snow Leopard) to Mac OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion).
Choice of interfaces
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. There's 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. There's also a built-in browser to convert web content to speech more easily.
3. Panopretor Basic
Easy text to speech conversion, with WAV and MP3 output
Exports in WAV and MP3 formats
Text Speaker For Macbook Air
As the name suggests, Panopreter Basic delivers free text to speech conversion without frills. It accepts plain and rich text files, web pages and Microsoft Word documents as input, and exports the resulting sound in both WAV and MP3 format (the two files are saved in the same location, with the same name).
Speakers For Mac Pro
The default settings work well for quick tasks, but spend a little time exploring Panopreter Basic's Settings menu and you'll find options to change the language, destination of saved audio files, and set custom interface colors. The software can even play a piece of music once it's finished reading – a nice touch you won't find in other free text-to-speech software.
Text Speaker For Macbook
If you need something more advanced, a premium version of Panopreter is available for US$29.95 (about £20, AU$40). This edition offers several additional features including toolbars for Microsoft Word and Internet Explorer, the ability to highlight the section of text currently being read, and extra voices.
4. WordTalk
An extension that adds text to speech to your word processor
Customizable voices
Developed by the University of Edinburgh, WordTalk 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 you're using.
The toolbar itself is certainly not the most attractive you'll ever see, appearing to have been designed by a child. Nor are all of the buttons' functions very clear, but thankfully there's a help file on hand to help.
There's no getting away from the fact that WordTalk 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.
5. Zabaware Text-to-Speech Reader
A great choice for converting text from websites to speech
Good file format support
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 US$25 fee (about £20, AU$30), which seems rather steep, holding it back from a higher place in our list.