Speech Central: Text-to-Speech

This is a great app to turn text into audio. Text can include websites, ebooks, etc. I upgraded to the Pro version to get full access. One wish for the developer: please add more information, and maybe links on your website, to the external voice providers to get access to the Voice API Keys from providers such as Microsoft, OpenAI, Google. I’m finding the built-in iPhone voices not as natural. But, I’m using iPhone XR so maybe upgrading to iPhone 16 Pro might be a little better. But, voices from Microsoft/OpenAI/Google definitely sound much much more natural. Also, it would be great to have an option in the app to read full articles from websites (like Arstechnica) instead of just the headline and a quick snippet. Otherwise, a great app 👏

The latest update has broken the app for me. Pdfs i try and upload now says “Error. Data couldn’t be read because it isn’t in the correct format”. Um…its a freaking pdf, which this app claims to be the king of. Even my old files (which are ALL pdfs and worked fine before) now display this error message. Whatever, moving on, its not like there aren’t a million other pdf readers out there.

If you want to take what I wrote as an attack, that is your choice, but it doesn’t support your claim that I was rude. As a paying customer, it is irrelevant to me if the incident is isolated or not. That is not my concern, and definitely not within the scope of responsibility on my part. What is my concern is that my purchase was not working correctly. If you take issue with my communicating that in open forum, perhaps you should make sure your contact forms are functional. They are not. I tried several times to submit a complaint quietly, but was unable to do so. It’s probably not great customer service to attack a purchaser of your product. ***************************** I asked for a refund and was denied. Appealed and denied. I won’t apologize for not being pleased when an app that I willingly paid for doesn’t work well enough to be useable. I wasn’t asking you for a refund. I was informing the readers of my comment that I was unhappy enough with this app to request a refund. Your app may be good, but if it doesn’t work, then buying it is a risk that costs real world money. It’s not rude if I choose to express unhappiness with an ill-working app, no matter where I choose to comment. Every time I try to scroll through my booklist, this app freezes up. It must be force quit and restarted but it never fixes the issue. Refund requested.

Cannot add websites to the headlines after updating and purchasing the app. Hope it is fixed and stops giving you “error” messages

Love it a lot. It does what I need. Please don’t make any tiered subscription systems for newer features. The one time purchase is awesome. Helps a lot.

This app is exactly what I was looking for! There are so many AI text-to-speech reading apps out there that try to lure you into paying hundreds of dollars in annual subscription fees. Setting up a free tier (F0) Azure Speech service through Speech Central gives you all the same benefits without the high costs and privacy concerns. The developer has put a lot of effort into making the interface work smoothly while offering customization and control (there’s even an Apple Watch app). I was impressed by how the app has been around for several years and continues to get updated with new features, such as AI speech-to-text. So I can be confident that the application will keep improving as text-to-speech technology advances. Highly recommended for anyone who loves having an audiobook experience with their webpages and ebooks.

My new favourite app! I really appreciate the versatility and attention to detail to make things seamless. Huge productivity boost.

Doesn’t read the webpage just header and footer

There have been to many changes, and not for the good. You can no longer save an mp3 to your voice recorder. And now when you save it to a file, you get a horrible robotic voice. I don’t know why you decided to do this? The app was perfect. I absolutely hate hearing my stories being told in that robotic voice. And I don’t want to hear it right on the app, you cannot skip ahead to parts you want to listen to.

Hi, I thought buying the pro would help me buy for once and sync my laptop and my iPhone since I want to install books from my laptop then listen on my iPhone. Why do I have to pay $12.99 every time? I want to sync it on my Mac.