[xtypo_dropcap]W[/xtypo_dropcap]e have previously reviewed a text-to-speech app and it was fine for a free app—although it got the job done, it was lacking in many ways. So what would you get if you paid just a few dollars more? With Speak it! you get quite a bit.
Like most text-to-speech apps, it will speak what you type and more usefully, it can read what you paste into its text box. This is one of its standout features. The text box will accept very large passages of text. I was able to copy the entire text of A Christmas Carol, paste it into Speak it! and without any noticeable delay, it started reading as soon as I touched the Speak it! button.
The other standout feature is that the voice quality is quite good for an electronic device. In fact, it is probably as good as any voice available through desktop software. As a point of comparison, the clarity and level of realism of the voices is better than the best voice that comes with Mac OS X.
To be realistic, no software can yet read everything as well as a human being, but Speak it! does a very passable job as a human impostor. It understands many abbreviations and punctuations, and pauses and changes its inflection appropriately most of the time. It reads non-fiction quite well, and with most passages it could pass for an actual human, but give it a work of fiction such as the aforementioned A Christmas Carol and it quickly betrays its true being, as it applies inflection where it’s not needed or neglects inflection when it is needed and maintains a very even rhythm that sounds very unnatural.
To be fair, Speak it! was really meant for reading news, e-mails, web pages, and documents. Unfortunately, the app does not facilitate this process. It can only read text that is pasted into it, which means that you have to be able to copy the text from whatever source you have. If you had fantasies of having all of your e-mails read to you, you’ll have to wait a little longer, as there is not yet the level of integration of technologies that exists to make this possible.
There are a few minor features that can be very useful at times. As the app reads your text, it also highlights the words that it reads. It can also convert your text into an audio file and then email it to you. The conversion is faster than real-time and is very quick. Desktop software that offers similar functionality typically costs more than 20 times as much as Speak it! so this really is an excellent bargain.
Speak it! costs $1.99.
[etRating value=“ 4”]
