Hi, everyone,
I'm looking into Speech Central for a friend of mine, and I have some questions. I did recently re-download the app so I could play around with it and try and figure things out, but I am a little bit stumped.
So, here are my questions:
One. Are you limited to downloading files from just iCloud, or is Dropbox also supported?
2. Does the app support rtf, doc, and docx-Files?
3. I imported a copy of Black Beauty from Project Guttenberg into it to test reading, and it first started reading with a rather pleasant sounding female British voice. I paused the reading and left the app. When I came back into the app and resumed playback, the voice switched to a male British voice. I finally figured out how to get into the settings, only to see that the voice was apparently sent to vocalizer Samantha. What on earth is going on here? How can I get that female British voice back? I'm asking on behalf of myself, but also on behalf of my sighted friend who wants to get more into reading but who also doesn't read on screens because she already games a lot and she's trying to make sure her eyes stay healthy. I gather she has some eye strain going on. My friend, as far as I know, has never used text to speech before, and I think this female British voice would be an easy listening experience for her. I don't think it was Emma or Amy from Acapella (is that Acapella or Ivona)?
4. What voices does Speech Central support? I saw in the help that you apparently can't use the Siri Voices with Speech Central, which is a shame. I don't think my friend is going to want to pay a monthly cost for the Microsoft voices the app talks about.
5. Voice Dream Reader, which I'm way more Familiar with, lets you tap on a certain part of the text and then hit the play button, and the text to speech will pick up from the start of that line. Speech Central isn't doing this, however. I'm wondering, is there a way to make this happen?
6. Can you organize things into folders?
7. Can you rename documents once imported?
Any help with these questions is grately appreciated!
Thanks,
Shersey
Comments
Some answers
One. Are you limited to downloading files from just iCloud, or is Dropbox also supported?
All cloud providers are supported if you go through the standard ios file browser where in the root you have iphone, and all other cloud providers install, google drive, etc. I think sc also supports connecting directly to some services but I've never explored that.
2. Does the app support rtf, doc, and docx-Files?
Yes as far as I know but double check the official doc, and I have no personal experience with this.
4. What voices does Speech Central support? I saw in the help that you apparently can't use the Siri Voices with Speech Central, which is a shame. I don't think my friend is going to want to pay a monthly cost for the Microsoft voices the app talks about.
Siri voices can't be used outside apple own things, and since ios 12 even voiceover has aweful trash versions of those same voice. Blame apple and I'm your friend :)
5. Voice Dream Reader, which I'm way more Familiar with, lets you tap on a certain part of the text and then hit the play button, and the text to speech will pick up from the start of that line. Speech Central isn't doing this, however. I'm wondering, is there a way to make this happen?
It works for me, when I tap on any paragraph whether I've scrolled many pages away or not sc begins reading from that paragraph.
6. Can you organize things into folders?
Yes, but I've never done that personally, see the doc or sb else to be 100% sure.
7. Can you rename documents once imported?
Yes.
HTH
Thank you for your answers.
Hi, TheBlindGuy07,
Thanks for your answers. What do you think what going on with the voice stuff that I mentioned? Where it started with a British female voice and then randomly switched to a male voice? The female voice was extremely smoothe, without any weird dips and rises in pitch that Acapella voices do. Is their something in settings that I need to change in order to get SC to start reading from text that I tap on? Do I perhaps need to double-tap on it?
thanks,
Shersey
To confirm the answers
1. The answer was correct - it is the functionality of operating system to allow import from DropBox, OneDrive, Google Drive, etc as long as those cloud apps are installed on the device. Some apps still advertise support for "DropBox, Google Drive" etc which was relevant when this feature wasn't available in the operating system, which was around 10 years ago. Further you should never ever use such functionalities as you unnecessarily let the app to access and manage all your private data on the disk which operating system wouldn't do.
2. Docx and Rtf are supported.
3. It seems that you are using Random for voices which will display current voice in the player and it will change randomly. You need to set particular voice.
4. Siri voices can't be used in any app. You can use any 3rd party app that provide voices but at this point it is hard to 100% recommend any (you can try Piper but I think it needs few more updates to be a daily driver for everyone), the choice is much better on Android for various reasons. Other than that you can setup cloud voices, some of them offer free tier like Azure and Google Cloud, so overall you can have dozens of hours free that way, so they don't necessarily require monthly payment (even when paid they are paid per use, not per time period).
5. You can't move from particular point in the paragraph by double tapping the word. This may change in the future, but until it is implemented and works well (doesn't break anything else) I can't fully promise.
6. Yes you can have even hierarchical folders (folder in folder).
7. Rename is possible.
@Speech Central
Positive spamming again :) , thank you for your work on this app. LOVE IT.
Re:
Thanks, some good news is that the Piper app claims that it has fixed one out of two biggest problems (reversed speed controls) and it is expected in their next update. If the other is fixed (apostrophes problem) then it can be reasonably recommended to be used for voices in Speech Central on iOS. And I guess it is more a matter of "when" than "if".
To be more clear Piper is open source voice engine that is much more advanced than Apple's fairly obsolete technology and the app is completely free on iOS. Technically you can use those voices for VoiceOver too, but their profile matches better narrator use case (like being used in Speech Central app).