Natural Reader

An effective means to convert text to speech across a range of languages that can be free for occasional uses, or licensed if you use it commercially. With both app and online modes, this tool should please most people. When computers first reached the level of performance that supported GUIs and not just command lines, voice-to-text applications arrived. Synthesising the human voice from pre-prepared text inputs was a neat trick, and allowed for some interesting interactions. Then the text needed to be converted into a form where words were phonetically disassembled, and that took time and often human intervention. Today these tools, as ably represented by Natural Reader, are much more sophisticated. They can read the text provided in a document, or OCRed from an image, reading it back in numerous voice genders and styles to create quick voiceover or audio presentation. As some of this functionality comes pre-installed in Office 356, what does Natural Reader do that makes it worth using and licensing? For online, Windows and Mac application users, a free tier exists that limits users to 20 minutes per day using the premium voices. For online users, unlimited access to the premium voices, mp3 conversion and more file formats requires Premium tier that costs $9.99 per month or $59.88 per year. You can get access to the Plus tier for a total of over 100 voices for $19.99 per month or $110 a year. Those that use the apps have three tiers to choose from; Personal ($99.50), Professional ($129.50) and Ultimate ($199.50). And, these tiers are one time payments, not subscriptions. However, if you wish to commercial redistribute the audio generated by the Natural Reader process you will require a commercial license with a $49 monthly subscription ($588 per year billed annually), or you can have multi-users deals that reduce the cost per seat. They also have some education options for those that allow all students to use for free, incredibly. Overall, the cost of this service even for commercial use is very reasonable. The interface for Natural Reader is as simple as one might imagine, since its very much a point and shoot affair. A panel is available in the middle of the screen into which text can be pasted, drag-and-dropped or you can load documents from the approved file types. Alternatively, for those using the online model and the Chrome browser, an extension can be installed that allows any text to be highlighted on a web page to be transferred for transcription.