? The best text-to-speech experience - our proprietary engine significantly enhances the output of Apple's voices and AI voices (OpenAI, Azure, Google) by infusing their readings with emotion and variation.
? The best PDF support in text to speech apps - your reading flow will not be interrupted by footers, headers, footnotes, in text citations and long web links as they are detected by the advanced artificial intelligence in most cases. Even the scanned PDF documents are imported with titles recognised.
? The best web support in text to speech apps - for the first time you can listen everything as both articles and headlines (including RSS feeds) are supported. Articles can be added from the headlines page for fully uninterrupted flow or from Safari. And you can send articles from the desktop browser with the Pocket extension.
? The widest support for documents/office and e-book formats.
? CarPlay support.
? Knowledge and text annotation tools built-in.
? Import the text from the physical books with the camera.
? The widest choice of options to customize the voice, appearance and various other parameters.
? Sync playlist items across Apple devices including the macOS app and the current position in the text.
? Apple Watch app that can play the content independently of the main app.
? Export the text with annotations to the .docx format.
? Customize functions of audio buttons. The widest selection of tools to control the speed and browse the text that is read aloud.
? The app can be used with dozens of languages that have text-to-speech support on the device with automatic language detection from the content.
? Export the text to the audio file.
? The best in class accessibility. It is completely free when used with VoiceOver and tested to be accessible by legally blind users.
? Your data stays truly private, no data is collected even when the syncing is enabled.
The app is installed on over 250,000 devices and with consistent ratings above 4 stars Speech Central it is one of the leading global text-to-speech brands. It was nominated for the best iOS accessible app in 2020 and 2017 on AppleVis, the leading authority in the field of accessibility on Apple devices.
Supported document types are: PDF (including scanned documents), Microsoft Word (.docx), Microsoft PowerPoint (.pptx), OpenOffice/LibreOffice (.odt, .odp), .html, .mhtml, .webarchive, .txt, .rtf. E-books in the .epub format are supported.
HeyNow added Speech Central as alternative to Kokoro
zimo2013 added Speech Central as alternative to TurboTTS
Steven_Ho added Speech Central as alternative to Voxdazz
POX added Speech Central as alternative to SpeakMyVoice
Comments and Reviews
It's a good-ish program, but you also don't need it at all... but it's a little more conveint than not having it... kind of...
Why you're looking at this program: You want to use TTS that uses API voices. Eg: Azure, OpenAI, Amazon Poly, Google AI.
So first thing to keep in mind: Amazon poly is NOT SUPPORTED. So if you are hoping for Poly... too bad.
Second NOT ALL AZURE VOICES are listed. You also can't change the style of the voice.
Azure AI !!!YOU CAN NOT EXPORT TO AUDIO FILES!!! Sorry that needed to be said very loud. This program can only export audio in built in TTS voices.
Speech Studio will give you far better options... except for its character limit per file... 3,000 free or 20,000 Pay-As-You-Go and will let you export in whatever format you need.
Speech Central HAS NO GLOBAL HOTKEYS. If you are use to quaLity TTS systems like TextAloud be prepared to be very unimpressed with the feature set.
This program is really just an easy way to read things with Azure/google/OpenAI voices and that's it. It is not for producing audio files with them, it is not for using their advanced options, or even all their basic options.
It has a lot of promise, but it's also pretty old and the dev hasn't added much to it. So don't expect it to change.
Only buy if you just want to listen to things and little to nothing more.