Text To Speech - Audio for your Websites!
Yesterday I promised to upload a tutorial on how to create an audio file from text. Amazon was my first choice and I had a decent draft almost ready but people chose Google Cloud Service.
Honestly, I didn't have the time to prepare this version the way I like but a promise is a promise and I hope posting a preview should temporarily satisfy curious minds.
What I will show is how to create a mp3 file that can be uploaded to your WP media library reading any short text.
This is a page where you can test the service.
- Open the URL in Chrome
- Insert your own text
- Select the language locale
- Click Speak It (or Replay)
- Play with the parameters until you get a natural as possible result
Change the Language/locale according to your preferences and try different Voice name settings.
Now open the inspector right-clicking on the page (or with Ctrl-Shift-I)
On the Inspector pane go to Network and click on Media
Click the button Replay and notice what happens in the right-pane. A new row shows up.
Right-click on that row to open a popup menu.
Click on Open in new tab
And voila! a player with the audio content lets you save the file. The default name is download.wav but you should rename it before saving. Almost there, we have the file in our PC. However, there's another step involved...
WAV vs MP3
The file you've just saved is in WAV format but it's almost 10 times bigger than a MP3 with the acceptable quality for a website. So the last step will be to convert the WAV file to MP3.
Google 'convert mp3 to wav online'. There are many websites that you can choose from.
I chose an audio quality of 128 kbit/s but for voice you can use less quality for a smaller file size.
I'll be happy to get your feedback. It will definitely help me to prepare a better tutorial on this topic.
Cheers
Recent Comments
33
Amazing, my stars!
You could make a video, I enjoy this blog and I like the Speaksee Idea for people with hearing impairment. Anytime we work with different modes and styles of communication, the more people we reach.
You are wonderful for sharing this, I am thinking about trying it:)
Nurse Becca
Thanks for your comment, Rebecca!
Providing audio on web pages has multiple benefits for visitors but also for SEO.
Cheers
Hi, Fran. I still owe you my tutorial. It's still a draft, I wanted to explore SSML optimizations to include.
Thanks for your support (and your patience)
You don't owe me anything, my friend. I'm happy to assist. Take your time, I'm sure everyone will appreciate it when it's done.
Hey Richard - that's actually pretty darn good! :-)
It's not as half robotic as some speech and the inflections are pretty good, too.
Amazing!
Ian
Yes, Ian. And it's much easier to tweak until you are satisfied. I still haven't explored the potential of the SSML optimization.
Thanks for commenting.
Cheers
Richard
Awesome! I'm going to test it for the therapies
I'm doing with my little patient!
Really great!
Thanks little genius!
Ingrid
Wow! That's great, Ingrid! I'll be working on the tutorial and I may have new stuff that you may find helpful soon.
Little? I'm 6 ft 3 ;-) hahahahaha
Great, great!
Keep on working because it's very useful for me.
I tried it today with a family who lives too far away to
come to therapy in my office and that helped us a lot.
You are like a genius who came out of my bottle!!
Thank you so much!
Ingrid
Good Morning Richard,
This has to go to my Technical Manager as I am not good with these kinds of things.
This is not your voice, is it? because it does not go with your picture.
I wonder if my gravatar picture on my website could say something like Hello, everybody, welcome to my site. No, I think I better shut up.
Greetings from the south of Spain, Taetske
There are so many technical things to take care of that the best option is to outsource...
That voice is the result of the example I posted.
To play audio clicking an avatar is easy if you know Javascript.
I may create a tutorial if enough people manifest interest.
Cheers
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Lot of information. Have to bookmark and come back. Thank you for the share.
Thanks for your comment, Michael. Glad you find it useful.