October is Dyslexia Awareness Month. What better time is there for the very first Voice Dream newsletter!
Product News
Acapela Voices Are Now Available on the Mac
People love Acapela voices, like Sharon for US English, and Manon for French. Acapela voices are very high quality and extremely reliable. Now, with your subscription to Reader for MacOS, you get all Acapela voices in a language of your choice, for free.
iOS 16: Great, But…
Good news: iOS 16 will come with a massive number of new text-to-speech voices, including some people’s favorite: Eloquence voices. (If you wonder why people like these robotic sounding voices, it’s because they are intelligible even when sped up to 1200 words per minute, a whopping 6x normal speaking rate.) New US English voices of Nathan, Evan, and Zoe are great. Bad news: you should hold off upgrading because of a bug: all voices, especially Eloquence voices, frequently report incorrect words spoken. Let’s hope iOS 16.1 fixes this bug.
Did You Know That…
Speed and Playtime Estimates
Voice Dream Reader lets you set speech rate in words-per-minute and estimates the playtime of each document. This is not trivial because every voice is different. In our labs, we carefully analyze each voice we support to determine its characteristics. This way, Voice Dream can accurately inform you how long it’ll take to read a document. If you change voices, you can take the speed setting from one voice to another without any adjustment.
Hot Tips
Save Web Pages on a Mac to Read Later
Reader for MacOS comes with a Safari Extension. When you’re browsing the Web on your Mac, you can use the “Save to Voice Dream” extension to save a Web page for reading later. Next time you pull out your iPhone and open Voice Dream, the articles you saved from your Mac will pop right up.
How to Study and Review Efficiently
When reading a book or article for schoolwork, you can highlight important passages and add notes. Then, before an exam or writing an essay, open the document, tap the “Document” button and “Export Highlights”. Then, tap “Save to Voice Dream”. There’ll be a new document in the Library with only highlighted text and notes. Play that document to review.