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Advanced Text To Speech 3.60 - User Guide and FAQ

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Important Options

There are many options available on the Options dialog. Select from the following for detail.

MP3 Quality Settings

The settings in this group box control the quality of the MP3 file you generate. The lower the bitrate (kbps) the more compression is used in the audio file. Audio quality deteriorates as more compression is used to store the audio information. The tradeoff is that the more quality you give up, the smaller your MP3 files will be.

If you are using an MP3 player which requires a minimum sampling rate of 44.1 KHz, you should be able to use either the 56 or 64 kbps settings.

Write to File(WAV/MP3) Speed

Use this option to control the speed of creating .wav files from text. This setting affects the speed of creating MP3 files, since a .wav file is produced as an intermediate and converted. The settings are expressed as multiples of normal speaking speed: 1x means to produce .wav files at normal speaking speed; 8x means to produce the .wav file in 1/8th the time.

The setting works by controlling the amount of cpu used by the speech engine. At very high settings, the engine will use as much of your processor as necessary to keep up. We recommend setting this value to 8x and if you wish to increase it, do it gradually.

You need to be particular careful with very high settings if you intend to actively use other applications while converting large text files. You may see your system become very sluggish with responding to keyboard / mouse events, and maybe even have some problems running other applications.

Hotkeys and Global Hotkeys

Hotkeys are shortcuts for commands/menu items. They're very handy if you know them well. ATTS allows you to custom all hotkeys as you please.

Global hotkeys are different with ordinary hotkeys. They'll be effective beyond the confine of single program. In other words, you can control ATTS by global hotkeys when you're writing with your word processor or even playing a game.

There are three predefined global hotkeys - Ctrl+Alt+F2 for Read Aloud, Ctrl+Alt+F5 for Pause/Resume and Ctrl+Alt+F6 for Stop. Of course, you can modify them.

Clipboard Options

Watch Clipboard
This option determines whether or not ATTS will watch the clipboard for updates.

If Watch Clipboard is not enabled, updates to the clipboard are ignored. The Ctrl+V must be used to manually paste text into ATTS.

When Watch Clipboard is enabled, ATTS detects clipboard updates, and acts based on the settings that follow.

Ignore Clipboard text less than nn characters
When ATTS detects an update to the clipboard, it ignores the update if the amount of clipboard text is less than this value. Set this threshold to a relatively high number to enable ATTS to watch the clipboard for large amounts of text, and ignore routine cut and paste operations between windows.

Display Prompt Dialog
Select this option to have ATTS prompt you before retrieving text from the clipboard. If this option is not selected, any text copied to the clipboard (exceeding the above threshold) will automatically be retrieved.

Display Prompt Dialog for nn Seconds
The prompt dialog displayed to retrieve clipboard text is a timed dialog, meaning the dialog automatically closes after a fixed amount of time. Use this option to configure the number of seconds the prompt is displayed.

Default Action
Use this option to configure the default action taken if you do not respond to the timed dialog to retrieve text from the clipboard. Possible settings are:

Read Now! - ATTS read the text in clipboard immediately.
New - Text should be retrieved from clipboard and added as a new document.
Append - Text should be retrieved from clipboard and appended to the current document.
Cancel - Text should not be copied if no response to timed dialog.

Frequently Asked Questions - Advanced Text To Speech

I have a text file (C:\My Documents\Stock.txt). How to make ATTS read it back to me?
It's very easy.
1. Click File->Open to add C:\My Documents\Stock.txt to the play list.
2. Click on the "Stock" tab to make sure it's the current document.
3. Click Playback->Read Aloud.
Is there a convenient method to listen to my email with ATTS?
Open your email program, highlight the text from an email message, hit Ctrl+C and click Read Now! when prompted. Then...listen.
I'm uninterested in the quality of mp3 audio files. I just want to get the smallest mp3 files. How to set it?
In the Conversion tab of the Options dialog, select 24 KHZ from the Resample Frequency combo box and select 8 KBPS from the Bitrates combo box.
Is there a shortcut to convert text files to mp3 files?
Yes. In the Windows Explorer, right-click on a .txt files and select Read to MP3 command from the context menu. Please wait for a moment when converting.
Where I can download more voices?
You can download more voices/speech engines from http://www.text-to-speech.net/voices.html.
Does ATTS support command lines?
ATTS has a powerful command lines processor. It allows you to do the following operations:
- Text Block to Speech
- Text File to Speech
- Text Block to WAV
- Text File to WAV
- Text Block to MP3
- Text File to MP3
- WAV to MP3
- MP3 to WAV
- List all speech engines on your system
- Get the detail of a special speech engine

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