Text to Speech - Best?

[pivaska]

I read a lot of Ebooks and especially in MS Reader format. It is easier for me to listen to them instead of reading them. I have a lot of driving and walking time and it is a bit distracting trying to read and drive at the same time :wink: So the question is what is the best text to speech program out there that is either free or not free. This would be one program that I would be willing to make an investment in if it works well. I have a Dell 50v with the most current OS and upgrades. I also would be willing to go to a different reader if necessary.

[dlangton]

I doubt that you'll find anything that will be able to see a lit file as text. Software like Trancreative's Wordbook is pretty good at reading text files or Word documents, but doesn't see lit or pdf files as text. If you stick strictly to text files you'll be ok.

[pivaska]

It appears that this is just a dictionary. I need something that will read a full text doc. I have downloaded Natural Voice and thought of letting it read the doc to a wav file and then converting it to an mp3 to play on my pda.

[dlangton]

It appears that this is just a dictionary

It's a dictionary with a text to speech component. It will read whatever text you select. If you do an Edit/Select All and then choose the WordPicker Read option, it will read an entire document. Works great for me. Best text to speech app I've found.

[Tye]

iSpeak by Fonix works too if you only use the clipboard player.
I use this almost daily with uBook. Give it a try--it is the best solution I've found yet for on-the-fly TTS for PPC.

[pivaska]

It seems that not too many people use this means of listening to books. There are so many of the older novels that I have that I want to "read" but they are not on audible and I don't know if they will ever be. But the search will go on. Thanks.

[IpaqMan2]

iSpeak by Fonix works too if you only use the clipboard player.
I use this almost daily with uBook. Give it a try--it is the best solution I've found yet for on-the-fly TTS for PPC.

What version of iSpeak are you using? I downloaded 3.0 since I read fromother reviews that 2.0 do not work with 2003 of Windows Mobile. I wasn't able to find anything in 3.0 that speaks about the "clipboard Player".

[Tye]

iSpeak by Fonix works too if you only use the clipboard player.
I use this almost daily with uBook. Give it a try--it is the best solution I've found yet for on-the-fly TTS for PPC.

What version of iSpeak are you using? I downloaded 3.0 since I read fromother reviews that 2.0 do not work with 2003 of Windows Mobile. I wasn't able to find anything in 3.0 that speaks about the "clipboard Player".

[Tye]

iSpeak by Fonix works too if you only use the clipboard player.
I use this almost daily with uBook. Give it a try--it is the best solution I've found yet for on-the-fly TTS for PPC.

What version of iSpeak are you using? I downloaded 3.0 since I read fromother reviews that 2.0 do not work with 2003 of Windows Mobile. I wasn't able to find anything in 3.0 that speaks about the "clipboard Player".

Hmm, don't know what happened to that last post.
It sounds like you're using Fonix VoiceCentral. As far as I know, only Fonix iSpeak will work in the way I'm describing. You can download a trial from PocketGear.
If you give it a try, I'm curious what you think of it. I am surprised that there aren't more TTS apps out there. Maybe they didn't sell that many?
Another bug of iSpeak in WM2003SE is that the voices don't "stick". If you find a voice you like, it will default back to the default after each startup. I am also curious if iSpeak used in conjunction with VoiceCentral fixes this issue? Again, please let me know if you find out.
I hope that helps!