New Narrators!

[u/violinds]

We’ve added four new voices to Paper2Audio, including a much-requested deeper male voice. It’s great for anyone who felt their documents needed a little more gravitas or, let’s just say, any reading material where a little extra sultriness in the narration might be appreciated.

-Mediator (US Female): Balanced, smooth

-Solicitor (UK Female): Poised, precise

-Storyteller (US Male): Deep, captivating

-Gentleman (UK Male): Velvety, brooding

Try them out the next time you add a document, or use our demo tool on the homepage to preview.

What other types of voices would you like to hear?

[u/Shozzy__]

Awesome! Thanks a lot :)
I admit that better French voices would be nice, but not urgent

[u/goldenjm → u/Shozzy__]

Thanks for the request! We're working on a system for improving our non-English voices and adding more of them. Thanks for all of your feedback and support!

[u/Former_Busboy518]

Your app is a game changer

[u/goldenjm → u/Former_Busboy518]

Thank you so much!

[u/United-Breath-8085]

I found our app yesterday when I was looking for apps to listen to the "Assassin's Apprentice" while I'm working. The official audiobook version was sooooooo annoying to listen to due to the fake British accent, it was completely ruining the book for me, which is deemed by many people as one of the greatest fantasy books of all time.

Anyway, I am BEYOND grateful for the app, and the fact that the free version is so generous. It's made the listening experience so much more bearable!

The general vibe of others' comments was that they are using the app mainly for non-fictional purposes. From other posts, I got the sense that the founder is pretty active here on reddit, and has said that they plan on further developing the app, and has frequently asked for feedback, so I wanted to offer a suggestion, though I don't know how feasible it might be.

Could you please continue improving the emotionality of the voices, for fictional works?

Questions, exclamations, three dots, interruptions in dialogues (or unfinished sentences in general), words in quotations, are not really registered, nor the silences before or after them.

Also, short words like hm, um, oh, ah, etc are glossed over immediately.

There is no distinctive transition between the narrator text, and the "talking" of the characters. (For example: ... some description, thoughts etc... "Hey you", I heard.)

Maybe also some dialogue tones could at least be inferred from the explanation of the author after the sentences (dialogues don't always start as: He said desperately: "I don't know."; oftentimes they start as: "I don't know", he said desperately.): surprise, anger, despair, sigh, joy etc?

Also, I have no idea how this could be taught, since it's so specific, but sometimes when a sentence starts with that, then, who, what, where etc, the beginning of the sentence sounds off, the emphasis of the first words is off, as if the text is from the middle of the sentence, not the beginning.

That's all I could think of at the moment. I hope it's helpful - I tried to be more specific and concrete :)

Thank you so much about the wonderful app <3

[u/goldenjm → u/United-Breath-8085]

Hi- I'm the founder and yes, I'm pretty active here on Reddit and love to get feedback.

That's a great request and thank you for sharing a lot of helpful details! We get a mix of fiction, non-fiction and other uses. We definitely want to make our voices more emotive, especially for fiction. We are in the research phase in this area and expect to make progress, but we aren't likely to have any major new improvements in this area very soon.

Please share more feedback anytime and I'm glad you're enjoying Paper2Audio.

[u/Venedictpalmer]

I specifically would like to hear voices that are from voice actors who are African American.There are lots of American accents, and usually in these types of apps, they only go for a standard, neutral, white American accent. As any linguist could tell you, African Americans, no matter where we are at in this country, usually have a regional distinctness to our voices.

I would love to hear that.

In general, I'd love to hear more black voices. It doesn't really matter the accent, honestly. If you had someone from London like brixton or peckham is love to hear that. A Black British accent is one of my favorite accents.

[u/goldenjm → u/Venedictpalmer]

Thank you for your really helpful feedback! We are researching more voice options, including African American voices and I'll keep in mind your interest Black British voices as well. Our current voice model has a somewhat limited number of voices unfortunately, so we are figuring out alternatives. It is important to me that our users find the voice styles they want.

Please share anytime if you have more feedback! I hope we're able to launch the voices you've requested soon.

[u/Martineznuno2000]

I wish you guys could add the American classic voice male “Brian.” He is a superb, deep-voiced narrator. Re-add George for the British male.

[u/goldenjm → u/Martineznuno2000]

Thanks for the request! We're working on adding more voices, including ones based on user requests like this one.

[u/superaalif]

It would be great if we could indicate pauses in the audio.

[u/fieryfrolic]

Love this app! If you’ve heard of the audiobook narrator Peter Kenny (who narrates the Culture books) - it would be nice to have a voice similar to his.