It is convenient to listen to this or that text at the same time as performing monotonous work, without being distracted by reading it from the computer screen. If there is no person nearby who would agree to read this text to you aloud, you can use a special program - a speech synthesizer.
Instructions
Step 1
Choose the speech synthesizer that works best for you. On Linux, you can use Festival, Flite, or Espeak. Festival has a significant volume, but it also synthesizes speech with high quality. Espeak takes up a little more than one megabyte, since it synthesizes speech in a formant way (this means that speech fragments spoken by a person are not stored anywhere, and the synthesis is carried out only by using mathematical laws), but the sound quality is also low, quickly tiresome. The Flite synthesizer occupies an intermediate position between them, both in terms of volume and quality of synthesis. In Windows, use free speech synthesizers "Captain" (based on Espeak), Govorilka, CoolReader, or purchase a paid one - Sakrament, VitalVoice, etc.
Step 2
Check the operation of the program. If it has a graphical user interface, enter a few phrases into the window, then have the synthesizer say them by pressing the dedicated key (it may have different names depending on the program). Experiment with the settings - try changing your voice, its timbre, reading speed, etc. Choose the option that is most convenient for you. If the synthesizer is started from the command line, first run the executable file without parameters (just by typing the espeak command) to find out what options the program has. Use these keys to change the parameters, and place the text itself right in the command line after them, for example, like this: espeak parameter1 parameter2 This is the phrase that you want to sound.
Step 3
Empirically determine the maximum amount of a piece of text that the speech synthesizer can pronounce without hovering. In the future, transfer fragments of this size to the synthesizer for processing (using the clipboard). This will allow you, on the one hand, to be less distracted from work in order to force the synthesizer to sound the next fragment, and on the other hand, not to waste time fighting freezes.
Step 4
If you do not want to install any programs on your computer and force the machine to convert large fragments of text into speech, and speech synthesis is only of sporting interest to you (surprise your friends, listen to the machine speak itself), use online speech synthesizers. In them, the conversion work is carried out on the server side, and so that it does not overload, the size of a fragment that can be converted at a time is from 0.5 to 1.5 kilobytes. Here are some of these services: https://cards.voicefabric.ru/https://www.oddcast.com/home/demos/tts/tts_example.php the link "Synthesis API", and select one of the postcards, fill in all the required fields, and speech synthesis will be carried out with musical accompaniment.
