OE Text Reader 4+

This is a reasonable reader at a cheap price. An aggravating aspect of the UI is that the "Voice Rate" is a slider bar that gives no numeric values. So if you are trying to tweak a voice speed and/or keep 2 different rates for use, good luck getting that slider back to the same spot. Another disappointment is that it exports to AIFF, but not to MP3. Good grief. Those 2 items = a lost rating star.

Only a few of the voices are worth using. A previous reviewer noted that Tom, Susan and Samantha voices sounded "real." On this release, only Samantha is left of that old crowd (in US English, at least). Her voice is reasonable, definitely less robotic in tone than the others in the English list that I've tried, and better than many other native Mac voices. There are a couple of others in the English list that do a decent job of realism: Daniel, a UK voice; Karen ("Australia") and Veena, an India voice. The others are pretty horrible. I was looking for a smooth, male British-accented voice -- something like the optimized voice that Siri has on the phone. If I could get that voice to read to me, I would have been content.

My goal is to create a special "speaking" gift for some neighborhood kids. I want the voice to sound real, but not be recognizable as someone they know. Almost there...

The negative is a necessary feature which this program does not have -the ability to select a start point or backtrack and review or re-read what you just heard. Most of the voices are just different tones of robotic sounds until you come across the Tom, Susan and Samantha voices which are real. You can vary the playback speed which is a great help and it highlights each word as it is spoken. For the price it is excellent, but i need the ability to choose my own start point. I would have to cut and paste from the new start point each time i want to review.

Nice and simple, already used it to make some voices for a game I’m working on. Just one hassle - once the text is read the cursor remains at the end and if you are tryinjg different voice/speed combinations you have to reset the cursor each time. If a new version is created I’d return the cursor to the original start position.