Read4Me 4+
Bas Meijer
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- £3.99
Screenshots
Description
Let your Mac do the talking. Read4Me reads text out loud, it can save to audio, and it can even save e-books (ePub) as AudioBooks so you can listen on the go! Use Read4Me for teaching, rehearsals and language study. Proof read your document by listening, that catches issues where spell checker won't help. And it is very easy to start, stop and select another voice. Set your preferred speed of reading to estimate the time to read the text during a presentation. You can even save the audio to a sound file. Create voice-overs for presentations and movies.
Read4Me will speak text in a variety of voices in 27 languages and also English dialects such as British, Irish and Scottish, using optional installs of Mac OSX.
Actually it is a text editor with spell check, printing, saving to Rich Text Format as well as Plain Text. Listen to various formats of documents: Microsoft Word, plain text, Open Office, RTF, HTML and DRM-free ePub books, and save them all as AudioBook.
Voice Coach is a unique feature of Read4me that allows you to embed pauses, pitch & rate changes into your text. Voice Coach tagging is essential in creating AudioBooks for poetry. Tagging is not always fully supported by all voices, but the classic voices can even sing with this feature (almost), other effects work best on the novelty voices.
* NOTE
You can download these voices from Apple for free, like this: System Preferences -> Speech -> System Voice -> Customize...
Available are high quality voices for Arabic, Cantonese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Thai and Turkish. Many voices have been added or updated in the latest version of Mac OS X. The Read4me support page on my website has a movie that shows exactly how to do this.
** NOTE
Highlighting works on OS X Mountain Lion or Mavericks after updating voices.
DISCLAIMER
OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard does NOT have free international voices. Read4Me is independent of speech engine, some engines deliver more features than others. There is no guarantee that 3rd party voices, like InfoVox or Cepstral work properly. Some InfoVox work, others don't due to the new sandbox in OSX. You might see 'iVoxSynth' or 'CereVoice3Synthesizer' in crash reports when you use certain features like tagging, don't blame Read4me.
COPYRIGHT Notice
This software uses code from libsox (version 14.3.2 without externals)
licensed under the LGPLv2.1 (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/lgpl-2.1.html)
The Sox source code can be downloaded at http://sox.sf.net
What’s New
Version 1.6.15
Bug fixes
Ratings and Reviews
Needs Updating
While this program works well it doesn’t show all my installed voices despite them showing up in another Text to Speech program and them all in System Prefrences/Languages & Regions. I’m using macOS High Sierra and after going into Aceccibility Speech and all installed voices ticked don’t all show up. So for that reason and not able to use purchased voices including those free and unable to use I’ll pass on Read4Me and giving this program 1 star. It clearly needs updating.
Doesn’t work
I got the app to do text to voice in foreign languages. Not possible. Said that I can go to the website to get a video on how to include other languages - can’t access the website. So, useless to me.
Developer Response ,
In System Prefrences there is a panel for Languages & Regions. It is important to select combinations like English - UK, or Spanish - Mexico because that is the way Read4me sorts its menus.
Also in System Preferences, under Accessibility-Speech there is a menu to Customize... the System Voice (Alex might be the default) you can download voices in regional dialects of many languages, but these are rather large (~2 gb per voice).
Waste of money
I bought this app to upgrade from the free app, text2speech. I wanted to be able to listen to my documents in a british accent, and was hoping for a more complex app. This app was a complete waste of money however. Once downloaded, I attempted to add the british voice, which i soon found out could only be bought from external applications costing me around $35 at least. I also seem to have problems using all of the functions - the help section refuses to load and I have trouble doing anything other than selecting a voice from the standard list. I might also add, that this list is identical to the one on the app I downloaded for free.
This is a complete waste of money since it has no superior functions to the free app and does not fulfil the criteria on which I originally bought it. Don't waste your money.
Developer Response ,
In System Prefrences there is a panel for Languages & Regions. It is important to select your favourite combination "English - UK"
Also in System Preferences, under Accessibility-Speech there is a menu to Customize... the System Voice (Alex might be the default) you can download voices in UK, and other British dialects (Irish, Scottish), note that these are rather large (~2 gb per voice).
App Privacy
The developer, Bas Meijer, has not provided details about its privacy practices and handling of data to Apple.
No Details Provided
The developer will be required to provide privacy details when they submit their next app update.
Information
- Provider
- Bas Meijer
- Size
- 11.2 MB
- Category
- Productivity
- Compatibility
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- Mac
- Requires macOS 10.6.6 or later.
- Languages
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English, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Norwegian Bokmål, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish
- Age Rating
- 4+
- Copyright
- © 2011 Bas Meijer
- Price
- £3.99
Supports
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Family Sharing
Up to six family members can use this app with Family Sharing enabled.