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I'm looking for free software to read text out-loud in different accents?

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Please rephrase your question...do you want Voice-Recognition (you're reading the text to the software) or Text-Reader (reading the text to you) Software? – Bobby Nov 30 '09 at 16:03
Text-Reader (reading the text to you) Software – CHEE Nov 30 '09 at 16:24
Preferred operating system? – DaveParillo Nov 30 '09 at 16:33
Windows vista Home Edition – CHEE Dec 1 '09 at 11:33
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2 Answers

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If you are willing to experiment, there are several free text-to-speech synthesizers available, but you may find them hard to use. These are still fairly well supported:

  1. ESpeak. A command-line program available for Linux & Windows.
  2. FreeTTS. FreeTTS is an open source speech synthesis system written entirely in the Java programming language. It is based upon Flite (Festival). FreeTTS is an implementation of Sun's Java Speech API.
  3. Festival. Complete, but probably the most difficult to use. This is included in many popular linux software repositories.

Otherwise, try Natural Reader. It includes US & UK english, french, german & spanish male & female voices. However, only the stock microsoft voices are used in the free version. There is an online demo with all the voices at AT&T research. Windows only.

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up vote 1 down vote

Cool Reader 2 is an eBook viewer for .txt, .doc, .html, .fb2 or .rtf, featuring text-to-speech and MP3 expport. however, CR2 does not change the 'accent' (i don't think there is aby software that will do this) but you can choose from any voice installed on your Windows system (Sam, Anna, etc.)

Cool Reader 2 is freeware and portable.

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The TTS portion of coolreader is only supported on Windows - through XP (but it probably works on Vista too). Coolreader 3 is 'cross platform', but lacks TTS. – DaveParillo Nov 30 '09 at 21:48
not to worry, CR2 even works on Windows 7 – Molly7244 Nov 30 '09 at 22:16
is the cool reader2 will be run on Vista Home Edititon on intel core 2 duo with 3 gb ram – CHEE Dec 2 '09 at 8:58
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