[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by Doitsu

You might want to check out the following projects:

[GUI Plugin] TTS to MP3: Create MP3 audiobook using Windows TTS

Heh, yes, yours is one of the TTS->MP3 Plugins I was thinking of.

You're the one who initially helped when I was discussing EPUB->TTS->MP3.

Originally Posted by Doitsu

Daisy Toby

Thanks. Wasn't aware of this.

* * *

(Edit: kevn57 responded as I already typed my entire post, so I'll leave it as originally written.)

Originally Posted by kevn57

I used to use the Calibre Viewer but now I use Balabolka portable.

[...]

It takes the ebook, displays a plain text, you have a choice of voices both installed and online(Google, IBM and some more). [...]

Fantastic. I'll definitely look into Balabolka soon.

* * *

Originally Posted by fabien.benoit.19

As of pocket book ereader. I'm a bit puzzled. [...] Cause the app perhaps allows to switch between text and audio when you need that, tracking current position for you.

Yep. PocketBook highlights all the text as it reads along. You can also hop around the ebook (or manually highlight a line text), then have it begin speaking from that exact location.

For me, some issues are:

• TTS can only be played on that specific (Android) device.
  
  • With an MP3, you can take that and carry it anywhere.
    
    • For example, playing it in the car.
      
    • Or playing the MP3 on Windows (in my usual music player), with the superior Android voice.
• TTS via PocketBook is nearly real-time. (Wasting CPU/Battery.)
  
  • Let's say I have a 100k word book. In PocketBook, the phone would take hours to speak sentence-by-sentence:
    
    • 100k words / 150 words per minute = 11.1 hours.
  • If you were exporting directly to MP3, you'd be able to generate audio as fast as the CPU can go.
    
    • Afterwards, playing the final MP3 would barely take any CPU/battery.

So, for example, it would be nice if I could set the basic TTS settings, like:

• Speed
  
  • Dense material, like a medical text, or topics I'm unfamiliar with, I'd have to slow way down.
    
  • A basic news article I want to read through, I can bump it up.
• Pitch
• Voice
  
  • I prefer the default Google TTS Female American English voice.
• [...]

Then create a finely tuned MP3 just for me.

Then I could take that MP3 and play it anywhere:

• Computer
  
  • With superior speakers
    
  • Or on wired headphones (my damn phone has no headphone jack).
• Phone
  
  • If superior MP3 was generated on computer, I'd be able to move MP3 here + listen to it while in bed, doing chores around the house, etc.
• Car
  
  • Won't be fiddling with controls, speed/pitch, etc. + can easily play/pause using car controls, just like music.
    
  • You'd be able to create a whole MP3 playlist, like 12 articles, and have them already prepped for a trip.
• [...]

With an older version of Android (8??), before Google crippled the API to record TTS->MP3, you used to be able to do this.

But that's right around the time I obsessively dove into all this TTS + podcasting stuff, and began to seriously pay attention to the whole audio side of books!

Originally Posted by fabien.benoit.19

There's a need for TTS->MP3 converter. In the end you are to have just an audio file. Is that enough for you?

Yep. Just getting the MP3, with higher-quality voices, would be fantastic.

Doesn't matter to me if it's Android or Windows-based, as long as I get that high-quality audio!

And for icing on top:

If it could understand basic HTML or EPUB, then it could do nice things like an MP3-per-chapter, pause slightly while reading Headings, etc.

Side Note: Firefox's Reader Mode, on desktop, has a TTS button to read websites:



But, sadly, the Firefox Android version doesn't have this! So, again, you're limited to the crappy robotic Windows voices.

Side Note #2: I haven't ventured into full Screen Reader programs yet, like JAWS or NVDA.

Perhaps these things already handle some of my use-cases, but from what I gather, these programs drastically change the way things work + introduce performance regressions (like Firefox slowing down due to all the extra Accessibility overhead).

(You can go into extreme customizability with these tools though... like reading advanced HTML + skipping reading out URLs, making specialized noises for <em> or <i>, etc.)

Side Note #3: This MP3-generation may be where "Balabolka" can come into play. Like I mentioned above, I haven't had the chance to fiddle around with it yet.

According to that "Balabolka" video aariatui on Reddit recommended to me, it looks promising for a piece of my use-cases.