Free Download Manager review of Sayvoice Text to Speech Reader

Sayvoice Text to Speech Reader is a curious program that will read a text for you if you just click the mouse. All you have to do is to insert a text into the window and press the Read button. On doing that, you will hear a man's voice reading the text. You will be able to control the speed and the volume of what is being read. Although the voice has quite a pleasant timbre, it also sounds a bit mechanical, which might not appeal to some users.

A definite advantage of the software is its ability to convert texts to MP3 files, which means that it is possible, for instance, to convert any electronic book into an MP3 file and listen to it while you are out and do not have a computer at hand.

We were also pleasantly surprised that the voice more or less sticks to the general intonation patterns: it stops when there should be a pause; if there are brackets, the voice speeds up not to dwell on the information that is not very important; and it also tries to variate the tone.

Besides the main tool, the software also possesses an in-built browser and an on-line translation tool that can manage not only single words but also whole texts. We should say though that translations the software makes are far from being perfect: even simple sentences are not grammatically correct. However, the translation tool can be used for the purpose of the general understanding of a text.

Naturally, the program is not a common one and can arouse great interest among linguists and other people interested in converting plain text into sounds. However, the software does not maintain high expectations at a closer examination.

To begin with, the developers claim that Sayvoice Text to Speech Reader can read texts of a wide range of languages, including English, Russian, German and Spanish. In the tests, we revealed that it actually does not read Russian texts, whereas the reading of Spanish texts is incomprehensible and German texts are read with a strong English accent.

And secondly, the performance of the software is rather unreliable. After some time, it simply refused to read texts and kept silent.

So, the program can surely interest many users, but it needs further development to receive greater approval.