Time to try "Read aloud" on Windows 8!

I had tried the "Read aloud" feature on my desktop and laptop machines in the past and had always been disappointed with the choppy, poorly cadenced result. I happened to try it on my new Windows 8 laptop this week and was very pleased. It is really close to someone actually reading the text. I verified that I was still getting the poor quality on my Windows 7 laptop, but I found the good result with several resources on my Windows 8 desktop.

It is good enough that I will add Bluetooth to my laptop in order to use my headphones.

So if you had given up on "Read aloud" in the past it is now time to try it out on your Windows 8 platforms. Perhaps someone can post a report on the state of this feature on the Mac.

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Comments

Claybon Collins Jr

It use to work on my desktop which is running Windows 8.1 but it stopped in January 2014. Logos has been trying to figure out what happened but no success. The last I was told was the next system update "b" would fix it. It has always worked on my Surface Pro 2.[:(]

JT (alabama24)

Perhaps someone can post a report on the state of this feature on the Mac.

"Read aloud" is an OS dependent feature (when not using one of the audiobook resources). Mac has been pretty advanced for some time in this area. MSFT has been beefing up their AI speech capabilities. I assume that "cortana" is one of the voices you have to choose from?

i don't know if you can do this or not... But something I do on Mac when preparing to speak: I select the manuscript and export as spoken text. It then syncs to my iPhone so I can listen to my talk while driving or walking.

Robert M. Warren

The quality of text-to-speech is one of the few benefits of Win 8 over Win 7.

I had upgraded to Win 8 on my laptop, but I really didn't like it in general and my particular installation had problems that were apparently insurmountable. I reverted back to Win 7 (happily), but I missed the quality of TTS.

I downloaded a fully functional trial version of one of Ivona's TTS voices and it worked great, even better than the Win 8 voice. So I purchased a couple of voices, Joey (Yank) and Brian (Brit). I also purchased their Reader program, which is great for making audio books that are very close to human quality.

David A Egolf

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/613817#Comment_613817

I assume that "cortana" is one of the voices you have to choose from?

Actually, I didn't choose. I used the default Microsoft David Desktop voice. There appears to be three voices from which to choose and none of them is "cortana".

i don't know if you can do this or not... But something I do on Mac when preparing to speak: I select the manuscript and export as spoken text. It then syncs to my iPhone so I can listen to my talk while driving or walking.

I don't see a method to "export as spoken text". Is this is Logos feature on the Mac or some other application?

David A Egolf

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/613820#Comment_613820

My wife and co-workers were surprised that I had anything nice to say about Windows 8. I have been complaining about the software so much that I thought this post was necessary to provide balance!

JT (alabama24)

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/613876#Comment_613876

There appears to be three voices from which to choose and none of them is "cortana".

MSFT is making a big deal about it... perhaps it is in the "next" version. Are you on 8.1?

I don't see a method to "export as spoken text". Is this is Logos feature on the Mac or some other application?

Completely unrelated to Logos. It can't be done within Logos at all. In any "native" Mac app, it is a "service" that can be accessed via a "right click" (contextual menu).

Paul C

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/613893#Comment_613893

Cortana is an element of Windows Phone 8.1. It does not apply to text to speech in the computer OS.

JT (alabama24)

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/614083#Comment_614083

Thanks for clarifying Paul. [:)]