Free text to .mp3/.wav converter?

August 27, 2008 12:01 AM

How do I convert text, .doc, or .pdf into a .mp3, .wav, or any other audio file for FREE?
posted by meta.mark to Computers & Internet (10 answers total)

Let me see if I'm understanding you right - you'd like to have text to speech synthesis? The Macintosh has it built in, you can access it in TextEdit, for instance under the Edit dropdown menu, and can change the voice in System Preferences under Speech.

Is this what you were asking?
posted by MythMaker at 12:14 AM on August 27, 2008

You are being totally unclear here. What the heck would you get if you converted text into sound?
posted by koeselitz at 12:29 AM on August 27, 2008

Ah. Is that what you mean? Text-to-speech?

I can look around a little. What platform are you on? Windows? Mac? Linux?
posted by koeselitz at 12:36 AM on August 27, 2008

Hey, look. This is supposed to do that, but I can't seem to get it to work in anything but German, which is fine if you don't mind having your text spoken in a strong German accent, I guess.
posted by koeselitz at 12:45 AM on August 27, 2008

Yeesh, I guess it's too late at night for me to think properly.

Look, man: this should work well. They do exactly what you're asking for (pdfs, docs, etc.) online and for free.

The catch is that they somewhat scammily want you to sign up for an account. Doesn't look to bad, I guess, but I hate giving out my email address. Argh.

Also, they're the very first Google result for "online text-to-speech mp3." So, er, yeah. Use google.
posted by koeselitz at 12:52 AM on August 27, 2008

It also really helps to tell us what kind of computer you have. If it's a Mac, for example, you already have the tools to do it, because you can use AppleScript to dump text to an audio file via the speech synthesis engine.
posted by secret about box at 1:50 AM on August 27, 2008

There are some ways on Windows, too, I think, and I know that Acrobat has a speech-synthesis thing built in, but I don't think any of those will spit out a file.

Can you let us know what you want? Please?
posted by koeselitz at 1:58 AM on August 27, 2008

The easiest way and probably best way and FREE way is to open up Windows Sound Recorder and your document and start recording by speaking into a microphone. Even text-to-speech programs you would spend good money on will not produce something flawless.
posted by JJ86 at 6:03 AM on August 27, 2008

This is a free text to speech application that can make mp3s or CDs out of the output.
posted by damn dirty ape at 7:00 AM on August 27, 2008

Personally, I like Read the words because they support a few languages. Only outputs as mp3 and it's not locally installed though.
posted by domi_p at 2:12 PM on August 27, 2008