Hear2Read R2 Gujarati Text to Speech Male voice

Gujarati Male voice for Release 2 Hear2Read Text to Speech (TTS) Engine

The primary goal of Hear2Read Ⓡ Text-To-Speech (TTS) Apps is to help Visually Impaired (VI) read books, web pages, e-mail, Word and text documents, digitally created true pdf with Unicode fonts, SMS text, Facebook postings and WhatsApp messages etc. by listening to speech output. Hear2Read Apps are also useful for people without Visual Impairment (sighted users).

Hear2Read Apps use Android TTS service APIs to provide TTS service to any App that supports the ability to "Read" by listening to software generated speech. The TTS engine runs as a background service available to any App (including Talkback) on the Android device (Smartphone or Tablet). The TTS Engine converts Unicode Indic text and ASCII English text to speech using the selected Voice database.

It requires devices with at least 1 GB RAM and Quad core CPU.

This major update from Release 1.2 to Release 2 splits the TTS Engine and Gujarati male voice in separate Apps. This App contains the voice database and prompts the user to install Release 2 TTS Engine from Play Store. The Release 2 TTS Engine is used by all Hear2Read voice Apps. It is available at:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.hear2read.indic.

Once the TTS Engine is installed, users can install additional R2 Hear2Read voices.

Hear2Read Engine App displays a simple Demo page to allow users to listen to example sentences. For reading longer text (such as books, web sites, e-mail, Word and text documents) use the Talkback feature (if you are a VI) or one of many screen reading Apps such as @Voice Aloud Reader. Hear2Read Apps are not meant to be used by themselves.

Many screen reading Apps provide an option to save the speech output. Hear2Read Apps do not save the speech output.

Digitally created .pdf files (True PDFs) can be read by Apps that can read pdf files with Unicode text. Scanned .pdf files with graphical images of text require OCR App for the specific font.

Please send questions to [email protected].

PLEASE DO NOT USE PLAY STORE REVIEW TO ASK QUESTIONS. We love to answer questions on how to use Hear2Read Apps. However, our response to review comments is limited to 350 characters by Google. Often this is insufficient to provide a complete answer.

Talkback (Accessibility feature for VI users) uses the TTS voice selected for the preferred engine under “Text-to-speech output” settings. The preferred engine default is generally Google TTS Engine. The language default is generally "system language" which is most often English. These are good choices for VI users who understand Android navigation buttons spoken in English even if they do not speak or understand English.

Some screen reading Apps for VI users (such as "@Voice Aloud Reader") determine the content language and then select the appropriate TTS engine and voice. Such Apps do not require users to change the preferred engine to Indic Hear2Read. Such Apps require Talkback setting Audio ducking (Focus Speech Audio) to be turned ON. This allows the screen reading App to pause speaking, when Talkback speaks using the preferred engine, as is the case when the user touches a navigation button or home button to open another App.

Some Apps (such as "Voice Dream Reader" for reading eBooks) allow the user to select and associate a TTS Engine and language for each book. This selection is used instead of the preferred engine & voice used by Talkback.

Until now Hear2Read focus has been on speaking Indic text well. We realize that often there is embedded English text and numbers. Numbers are spoken in Marathi whether written in English or Devanagari. We are working on modifying the Hear2Read TTS engine to use Google English TTS to speak embedded English text. This will improve the english speech outpu.

Hear2Read Apps use Festvox, Festival/Flite Open Source software developed by Carnegie Mellon Univ. and collaborators including Hear2Read volunteers and Univ. of Edinburgh.

Thanks,

Hear2Read team