Amazon drop Text-to-Speech from new Kindles: any other T2S fans? -

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Notoriety Reading The Buddha of Suburbia by Hanif Kureishi

18 Oct 2012, 11:34 AM | Post: #11

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RE: Amazon drop Text-to-Speech from new Kindles: any other T2S fans?

Thanks Daphne - just what I needed.

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George Hamilton

18 Oct 2012, 07:47 PM | Post: #12

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RE: Amazon drop Text-to-Speech from new Kindles: any other T2S fans?

I like the TTS to catch editing errors that I don't pick up by just reading. But I couldn't enjoy a book with it, as the voices are just too mechanical. I've listened to other robotic voices which are way better, so I'm sure Amazon could improve it if they really wanted to.

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Notoriety Reading The Buddha of Suburbia by Hanif Kureishi

19 Oct 2012, 08:45 PM | Post: #13

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RE: Amazon drop Text-to-Speech from new Kindles: any other T2S fans?

Just tried it. Not great for fiction, better with non-fic but I agree a bit robotic. Even my calibre reformatted pdfs are TTS enabled - remarkable. Eats the battery though.

Tony

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Daphne Reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

19 Oct 2012, 09:09 PM | Post: #14

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RE: Amazon drop Text-to-Speech from new Kindles: any other T2S fans?

This post was last modified: 19 Oct 2012 09:12 PM by Daphne.

(19 Oct 2012 08:45 PM)Notoriety Wrote: Just tried it. Not great for fiction, better with non-fic but I agree a bit robotic. Even my calibre reformatted pdfs are TTS enabled - remarkable. Eats the battery though.

Tony

I pretty much agree with all that - especially the bit about eating the battery. I was surprised to find that the .mobi files I have been sent are TTS enabled. My copy of The Hobbit isn't, though. I suspect you have to opt out rather than opt in, and some publishers opt out. I have Martin Shaw reading The Hobbit on tape - nothing robotic about his voice - so I won't miss that one on TTS.

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skate Reading Pompomberry House by Rosen Trevithick

20 Oct 2012, 07:42 AM | Post: #15

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RE: Amazon drop Text-to-Speech from new Kindles: any other T2S fans?

Like George, I use it for editing, but I couldn't listen to someone else's story read in such a monotonous voice. It is great, however, for sending children to sleep! My daughter has on a number of occasions, put her kindle on T2S because she wants to read but can't be bothered and I've found her fast asleep with the kindle still droning away. I've never managed to send her to sleep reading to her, so it must be the monotone voice.

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Neil Mac

21 Oct 2012, 08:09 PM | Post: #16

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RE: Amazon drop Text-to-Speech from new Kindles: any other T2S fans?

I too got a bit cheesed off with the t2s 'standard' robotic sound, but I have a stack of audio books which I enjoy listening to on my k3k. I was hoping we might of got the 'sync' option thats being promoted with the Fire as the 'mechanics' seem to be there in the k3k. If you are seriously in to audio books then one of the Fires would seem to be the answer. Strange though that Amazon are using the 'immersive' switching between audio and text at will, and always being in sync as a big selling point for the new Fires', not to mention the 'state of the art' speakers, but removing the audio side from the e-readers. I reckon it must be a pricing economy. As Amazon recently bought Audible its a pretty safe bet that t2s is being developed further, just not on the ereaders. Shame, but I'll be keeping my k3k till it dies, by then things may have changed.
BTW. The Kindle store listings do indicate when a book is t2s enabled.

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Daphne Reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

31 Dec 2012, 04:16 PM | Post: #17

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RE: Amazon drop Text-to-Speech from new Kindles: any other T2S fans?

I should just update this thread to say that I was delighted to discover that Text-to-Speech is available on my new Kindle Fire HD for Kindle books. Groovy

As far as I can tell there is only one voice available (female/American accent) but I like to think that I can detect a little more inflexion in the voice compared to those on my old Kindle 2.

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MTMcGuire Reading Editing mine: One Man: No Plan, K'Barthan Trilogy: Part 3

31 Dec 2012, 04:23 PM | Post: #18

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RE: Amazon drop Text-to-Speech from new Kindles: any other T2S fans?

I love the text to speech. Yes it makes howlers but like George and Skate I use it to spot errors, missed words and I have to say it is brilliant for getting the punctuation right so that a passage sounds the way you want it rather than the way you wrote it, so to speak. I also love it when it reads swear words. There's something really funny about hearing the voice of Stephen Hawkin swearing his head off.

Very glad to hear that it's available with the new Fire... I have a Kindle 3 with wifi... I really hope they keep that one going as I like the keyboard and use it all the time for editing.

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