Text to speech readers for Linux

[Nao57]

So I have been fascinated recently by how much you can boost and accelerate your intelligence and smarts with listening to audio books. This means, you can basically use your down time while driving or other things to listen to something while you would normally be commuting. Or while you are doing things like to do lists, shopping, and so on. This is time you normally would lose and can't use again.

You also learn to HEAR as a baby before you learn how to READ. This means more needs to be done and can be done to use audio books, audio text, and so on for Linux platforms and others. Whichever platform has this first and the most will have a big dominance and niche in the market once people realize this simple fact that people learn to hear before they can read. Therefore... people, adults and children can speed up their learning and intelligence by listening and not only reading.

This means more need for text to speech readers... and for them to work.

...

Right now Linux has a program called Festival that is some kind of read aloud program.

But it doesn't work. I tried to install and use it. Its broken. I'm using most recent version of Mint, and a brand new install.

I wondered if others might have tweaks or insight on how to get it to work? And is there a different program for Linux for text to speech or read aloud?

But even if that hadn't been the case, a lot of the cheap text to speech readers, read aloud programs if they are free have garbage robot voices that are a big turn off. And the others with good voices want you to RENT them. Renting isn't an option. People need good voices on them, that at least sound human. And they also need them to not have a monthly cost.

Thank you for listening.

 

[wizardfromoz]

G'day @Nao57 and welcome to linux.org.

But it doesn't work. I tried to install and use it. Its broken.

I'll bet it does, you're not holding your mouth the right way.

How do I know? Because after reading your Post, I put it onto my Mint.

I'm using most recent version of Mint, and a brand new install.

Is that 21.2 "Victoria"?

I have to go soon for my evening meal (Australia) but I will be back tomorrow.

In the meantime I recommend reading from start to finish the following Thread (from here in May), and the following video

https://www.linux.org/threads/ivona-voices-for-linux-mint.44689/

and

Do note that the conditions for using it in Arch and for your Mint differ a little, particularly with the voice choices, I will explain later.

BTW - take a Timeshift snapshot before you proceed so you can roll back if need be.

Cheers

Chris Turner
wizardfromoz

 

[Nao57]

G'day @Nao57 and welcome to linux.org.



I'll bet it does, you're not holding your mouth the right way.

How do I know? Because after reading your Post, I put it onto my Mint.


Is that 21.2 "Victoria"?

I have to go soon for my evening meal (Australia) but I will be back tomorrow.

In the meantime I recommend reading from start to finish the following Thread (from here in May), and the following video

https://www.linux.org/threads/ivona-voices-for-linux-mint.44689/

and

Do note that the conditions for using it in Arch and for your Mint differ a little, particularly with the voice choices, I will explain later.

BTW - take a Timeshift snapshot before you proceed so you can roll back if need be.

Cheers

Chris Turner
wizardfromoz

Thank you very much Chris. I'll take a look at that.

 

[MikeWalsh]

@Nao57 :-

Your point being, presumably, that absolutely everybody should be entitled to the very best of everything TOTALLY FREE OF CHARGE..?

Isn't anybody entitled to make a living in your world-view?

Personally, I gave up on messing around trying to get the native Linux TTS readers functional a long while ago. It's not one of Linux's strong points, frankly, and the existing toolkits are pretty much a complete waste of time. Much of what IS available is strictly "backend" stuff, mostly for developers to build applications with. It's not directly usable by the average Joe.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~​

I capitulated.....and run a couple of Windows TTS apps under WINE. "Text Aloud" - once considered the industry-standard TTS reader, before the advent of the modern life-like voices. I did find a source for the AT&T "Natural" voices, which for purely robotic voices are very listenable. 3 or 4 of those used up around 2.5 GB of download bandwidth at between 6-700 MB a throw!

The other is 'Balabolka-Portable', available on the PortableApps.com website. Also works well, making use of the same AT&T 'voices'.

In my view, there is no shame in taking a multi-platform approach. Windows is better at some stuff, Linux is far better at other stuff. So long as you can achieve your objective without fuss, who cares where it comes from?

(shrug)


Mike.

 

[vineyardde]

@Nao57 :-

Your point being, presumably, that absolutely everybody should be entitled to the very best of everything TOTALLY FREE OF CHARGE..?

Isn't anybody entitled to make a living in your world-view?

Personally, I gave up on messing around trying to get the native Linux TTS readers functional a long while ago. It's not one of Linux's strong points, frankly, and the existing toolkits are pretty much a complete waste of time. Much of what IS available is strictly "backend" stuff, mostly for developers to build applications with. It's not directly usable by the average Joe.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~​

I capitulated.....and run a couple of Windows TTS apps under WINE. "Text Aloud" - once considered the industry-standard TTS reader, before the advent of the modern life-like voices. I did find a source for the AT&T "Natural" voices, which for purely robotic voices are very listenable. 3 or 4 of those used up around 2.5 GB of download bandwidth at between 6-700 MB a throw!

The other is 'Balabolka-Portable', available on the PortableApps.com website. Also works well, making use of the same AT&T 'voices'.

In my view, there is no shame in taking a multi-platform approach. Windows is better at some stuff, Linux is far better at other stuff. So long as you can achieve your objective without fuss, who cares where it comes from?

(shrug)


Mike.

I've spent a lot of time working on this problem through the years. The solution I use is the NextUp-TextAloud 2.1 application on Linux running under Wine. It isn't perfect... but usable for listening or converting text to audio. With the latest Wine I didn't even need to tweak wine versions...it just runs out of the box. The solution has its quirks, but it still works, including batch converts to mp3. I use the Crystal voice for most everything, since it sounds really good even for being so old. It won't sound like google's, but that is OK for me. Note: I don't even know if the company / product is still around somewhere. But I though I'd share since wine is often overlooked.