Text to speech to mp3?

December 5, 2006 5:03 PM

I want to have a Word document read out by an automated voice and converted into mp3 format which I can then listen to on my mp3 player. The document could be up to a few thousand words. What is the easiest/cheapest way to achieve this? Also what is the best (most professional) way to achieve this?
posted by zaebiz to Computers & Internet (11 answers total)

I recently did some contract work for Feed2Podcast, which, well, does what the name suggests. Part of that is free text to MP3 conversion. To use that you'd have to put the text in a blog, run the feed through, look at the podcast for the MP3 URL, and download the MP3. I suspect there's some easier way to do text to MP3, but that's the easiest I know.
posted by scottreynen at 5:20 PM on December 5, 2006

Best answer: Text Aloud from NextUp.
posted by Merdryn at 6:40 PM on December 5, 2006 [1 favorite]

I got this one! Convert your Word document into a PDF. Open it in Acrobat Reader. Certain version of Reader have a wickedly monotonous, built-in reading-aloud feature! Just click "Read Aloud," and let your recording software capture it.
posted by Milkman Dan at 6:54 PM on December 5, 2006

Oh jeez. Just for fun, I busted open Acrobat Reader 7.0, opened my university transcript, and went View --> Read Out Loud. Good grief. Such a steady, watery voice; sounds like a principled man is giving a very disciplined lecture while gurgling. Hearing all those sexy numbers and letters makes me want to JUMP that reading voice.
posted by Milkman Dan at 6:57 PM on December 5, 2006

What computer system are you using? Mac users can do this from the command line.
posted by mecran01 at 7:35 PM on December 5, 2006

Response by poster: mecran01: "What computer system are you using? Mac users can do this from the command line."

PC. WinXP. 2.3Ghz. 1gb RAM.
posted by zaebiz at 7:36 PM on December 5, 2006

Easiest/cheapest way to do it is to buy a USB microphone, open up Windows Sound Recorder, and read the document yourself out loud (or ask someone to do it for you, kinda a reverse-transcriptionist service). It'll also sound a lot more natural than any artificial-voice solution anyway.
posted by jozxyqk at 7:41 PM on December 5, 2006

Cheapest: 'festival' open-source speech synthesis. I recommend the 'mbrola' voices.

Most Professional: I understand that Joe Mantegna does audio book readings.
posted by oats at 7:49 PM on December 5, 2006

What is the easiest/cheapest way to achieve this?

What operating systems do you use? On Mac OS X you could use the following steps (assuming you have a copy of Word, but don't have LAME installed):

1. Save the Word document as a plain text file (for instance, "speech.txt") to the top level of your user directory.
2. Type the following at the command line: say -f speech.txt -o speech.aif
3. Drag the file speech.aif into iTunes.
4. Choose the Preferences menu item in iTunes. Click the Advanced tool, switch to the Importing pane, and make sure you're importing using the MP3 Encoder.
5. Find the speech file in the iTune music library, select it, and then choose Convert Selection to MP3 from the Advanced menu. A second file named speech will appear in the library.
6. Using the Get Info menu item in iTune, determine the path to where iTunes has stored the new MP3 version of your speech file.
7. Copy the new MP3 file to a convenient location.

What is the best (most professional) way to achieve this?

Rent time at a recording studio, hire a voice actor to speak your text, and hire a sound engineer to record the actor. Ask the sound engineer to convert the recording to an MP3 file.
posted by RichardP at 8:03 PM on December 5, 2006

Response by poster: Merdryn: "Text Aloud from NextUp."

Just downloaded and tried this. Has some awesome Australian (as well as many other) voices. This is going to be great.
posted by zaebiz at 8:25 PM on December 5, 2006

Best answer: Winamp has a text input plugin on their website and a mp3/etc export output format
posted by psychobum at 9:33 PM on December 5, 2006