Has text-to-speech really improved that much? Listen for yourself.

In today’s post the text-to-speech voices will do all the talking, so you can hear for yourself just how good they’ve become. They’re more natural, better at reading texts – and there are more of them, in more languages. This is why today they’re a viable option – and very a very cost-effective one as well – for foreign-language voice-over services.

If you haven’t heard TTS voices lately, you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

[Average read & watch time: 3 minutes]

A history of development – and improvement

The quality of TTS voices has gone up dramatically in the past 10 years, largely as part of the push to create viable artificial intelligence systems. Think of the voice in your phone, whether it’s an iPhone, Android or Windows device – those are text-to-speech voices. Development teams worldwide are constantly creating new voices that have more depth; that combine words, sentences and phrases more seamlessly; and, of course, that sound more human.

TTS voices have improved in three major ways over the past ten years:

• Context-sensitivity: The voice fonts are getting better at interpreting text, whether it’s pronouncing words properly depending on context, or adjusting emotional tone for exclamations and questions.
• Overall listenability: The goal for TTS has always been to provide human-sounding text-to-speech services for voice-over production. This means creating voice fonts that don’t cause ear strain, and that hold a listener’s attention.
• Foreign-language support: Currently there are professional TTS voice fonts in 26 languages, and that number is growing.

Take a listen for yourself in the video that follows.

Want to learn more about TTS, or ? Visit our Text-to-Speech Services page, or contact us directly.

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