Hi everyone, Kevin here. Today, I want to show you how you could take text and turn it into speech. This is also known as TTS or text to speech. So why would you ever want to do that? Well, I don’t know. Maybe you want to have your computer read you a bedtime story or maybe you want to include your voice on top of a video. There are many different reasons. I’ve gotten feedback on my YouTube channel that my voice sounds a little bit robotic. So I was curious, could the computer do a better job than me? Here’s what I pulled together. The Kevin Cookie Company makes some of the most delicious cookies that you’ve probably never had before. If you haven’t had a KCC cookie, you haven’t had a cookie. Find the nearest location at kevincookiecompany.com and enjoy the best. Well, what did you think? Which one sounded more robotic, me or the computer? First, I’ll show you how you could do it without having to install any other software. You have everything that you need with Windows 10. Then I’ll show you how you could get another application that gives you a little bit more control. At the very end, I’ll show you one more app that gives you access to a whole bunch of different voices. All right, let’s check out how we can pull this off. To kick things off, I want to show you how you can convert text into speech using apps that come pre-installed and also for free with Windows 10. And the first app that we’re going to use is called OneNote for Windows 10. To access this, go down to your taskbar into the search field and type in OneNote. You’ll see the best match for OneNote for Windows 10. Click on this one. If you search for OneNote but you don’t see anything show up, don’t worry. You can still get it entirely for free. Simply open up the Microsoft Store app and in the top right-hand corner, click on Search. Then type in OneNote. And right here, we see OneNote for Windows 10. You can click on that and then you can download it right here and install it on your computer. With OneNote open, I’ve already composed some text in here that I want the computer to read to me. This is the text that you heard in the Kevin Cookie Company commercial. To have the computer read to me, up on top, I have all these different tabs. I’ll click on the one called View. And right here, there’s a feature called Immersive Reader. Let’s click on that. This opens up the Immersive Reader. And if you’ve never seen this before, the Immersive Reader makes it really easy to focus on the text that you’re reading. Here, you’ll see my text has double spacing. Also up here, I could change the text preferences. I could change the background theme. Over here, I could adjust different grammar options and I could also adjust my reading preferences. So, this way, I truly just focus on this content. However, I want the computer to read to me. And to do that, right down here, there’s a play icon. When I click on this, OneNote will read to me. The Kevin Cookie Company makes some of the most delicious cookies that you’ve probably never had before. So, I could have it go through and read all of this. To the right of the play icon, I could also click into Voice Settings. And here, I could adjust the voice speed. I could have it go extremely fast or even very slow. I could adjust the speed there. Down below, I could also choose the voice that I want to have read to me. I could have a male voice or a female voice, but with this, I only have two separate options. Now that we know how we can have the computer read to us, what if we want to record it? So, let’s say you want to put this on top of a video, or maybe you just want to save the text so you can listen back to it later. Well, to do this, we’re going to use another app that comes with Windows 10 called the Voice Recorder. But before we open that, we have to make one setting change. To make the setting change, back on your desktop, go down to the search field on the task bar, and here, type in Sound Settings. Let’s click into the best match. This opens up Sound Settings, and we want the computer to record what’s being played in OneNote. So, we need to modify the input. Right down here, when I click on input, I see all of my different microphones, but I don’t see the option to record system sound. And once again, I want to record system sound so it records what’s being played in OneNote. Here, I can go down, and let’s click on Manage Sound Devices. Within Manage Sound Devices, here we can see all of our output devices. We could also see all of our input devices. And down here, there’s one disabled option called Stereo Mix. Let’s click on that, and then select Enable. This now adds it as one of the input devices. This will allow us to record our system sound using the voice recorder. Now, if you don’t see Stereo Mix as one of the options, and you can’t enable it, don’t worry. The next option will allow you to do it, but it will require an install. Back on the main sound screen, under Input, select Stereo Mix. This will once again allow you to record your system sound. Once you select that, you can close out of this window. Now that we’ve finished making that one setting adjustment, go back down to your taskbar, and now we want to open up the voice recorder. Type in voice recorder, and then click on the best match. That’ll open up the voice recorder, and it’s a pretty simple app. You can’t really go wrong with this. Right in the center, there’s a large button that allows you to start recording. Let’s click on this. Now that the recording is active, I can jump back into OneNote, and I can click on Play, and it’ll record everything that the computer says. The Kevin Cookie Company makes some of the most delicious cookies that you’ve probably never had before. Now that OneNote finished reading all of this text, I’ll simply jump back over to the voice recorder. Here’s the voice recorder. Now I’ll click on Stop. I’ve now finished the recording, and I can jump into the middle of the track and listen to how it turned out. If you haven’t had a KCC… All right, well, that sounds pretty good. At the beginning, it took me a little bit of time before I kicked off the Immersive Reader. Right here, I can click on the Trim tool, and maybe I’ll trim a little bit of the beginning, and I could also trim a little bit of the end. Once I’m ready to save, I’ll click on the Save icon, and I could either save a copy, or I could just update the original. I’ll update the original. Now that my speech is ready to go, over on the left-hand side, I can right-click on this, and then I could open the file location. This opens up File Explorer, and here I see recording.m4a. I can now bring this wherever I want. Let’s say I’m editing a video. I could take this audio file, and I could drop it into the audio track, or if I just want to listen to it, I could double-click on it and hear the recording. Of course, one of the downsides is the voice recorder in Windows saves it as an m4a. Now, this is a pretty versatile file that most applications will open, but let’s say you want a WAV or maybe you want an MP3. You won’t be able to do that using the voice recorder, and next, I’ll show you another app that gives you a little bit more control and also flexibility. This brings us to one of my favorite audio recording and editing apps, and it’s called Audacity. This is completely free to download, and it works on all different platforms. You can download it at audacityteam.org, and I’ve also included a link in the description. On the homepage right here, you can click on Download Audacity. Once you finish downloading and installing Audacity, launch the application. In this video, I’m simply going to show you how you can record your system sound. If you want an in-depth overview of all the different things that you can do with Audacity, I’ve included a link to an introductory video in the description. To record your system sound with Audacity, in the top left-hand corner, click on this dropdown and select the one that says Windows WASAPI. To the right of that, we need to select the microphone. You might see many different options here. Select the one that says Speakers and Loopback. This will capture your system sound. Once you’ve made all those selections, we are ready to go. Up on top, let’s click on the Record icon, and it won’t start doing anything. It’ll add a track, and now it’s waiting for system sound. Let’s jump over to the OneNote Immersive Reader again. Back in the OneNote Immersive Reader, I can now click on the Play icon, and it’ll start reading the text. The Kevin Cookie Company makes some of the most delicious cookies that you’ve probably never had before. Once you’re done having OneNote read your text, jump back over into Audacity. Here in Audacity, I see that it captured all of the text from OneNote. Here I’ll click on the Stop icon, and when I click on Play, I can listen back to it. The Kevin Cookie Company makes some of the most… And there I could hear that it’s a perfect capture of OneNote reading that text. You can also use Audacity to record any audio source anywhere, so it’s a really good tool to have. Now that we’ve finished capturing all of our audio, we’re ready to export it. Go to the top left-hand corner and click on the File menu. Right here, you’ll see the option to export, and here you could export as an MP3, a WAV, and many other file formats. This now brings us to the third option, and this is a freeware app called Balabolka. That’s the Russian word for chatterer. You can download it at the following website. I’ve also included a link in the description. With this tool, you can upload a document, and then it’ll turn it into speech, and then you can download it as a WAV or an MP3. On the main homepage, you can download the application right here. Once you finish installing the application, launch it, and you’ll see an interface that looks like this. Right here, you can enter in your text, and right up above, you could set the rate or the speed at which it reads it. You could also set the pitch, and you could adjust the volume. Here, you can choose from two different default voices. You can also go in and install more, and in a moment, I’ll show you how you can access even more voices. Here, you could click on the play icon to listen to what it sounds like. The Kevin Cookie Company makes- I’ll click on stop right there. Now, unlike the other approaches where you have to listen to it and record it, here, you could simply export the audio. If I go up to the file menu, I can save an audio file. Here, I could type in a name, and I could choose the save as type. I’ll just leave it set to WAV, and then click on save. And just like that, I now have a WAV file here on my desktop of the computer reading all of this text. So it’s quite a bit easier than the other approaches. Now, I mentioned you can also get access to many more voices. Here, within the Balabolka app, up on the top menu, click on tools, and there’s the option to use online TTS or text-to-speech services. Let’s click on this. This opens up a screen where I can use many different services to convert my text into speech. Here, I’ll paste in my text up on top. I could choose where I want to save my audio file, and down below, I can choose the service that I want to use. Here, I could use Google. I could use Baidu. I could use IBM Watson. I found that IBM Watson works exceptionally well, and there are many different voices that you can choose from. When I click on the dropdown here, I’ll see some different UK voices. Maybe I want to have a British accent, narrate the Kevin Cookie Company commercial. Down below, I also have a bunch of different US voices, and I have many other languages to choose from. Here, I’ll go with James from the UK, and once I’m ready to go, I simply click on save. Once it finishes processing, it’ll simply place a file on my computer, and it’s called Cookie 2. Let’s have a listen. The Kevin Cookie Company makes some of the most delicious cookies that you’ve probably never had before. Ah, that voice sounded pretty good to me, but once again, you could come through here and experiment with many different voices. So, if you want the ultimate text-to-speech app, where you don’t even have to record the audio, you could simply export it, then Balabolka is an excellent option. Of course, the one downside is you have to install another app, and so if you don’t want to do that, you do have some tools that just come on your computer that you can use. All right, well, let me know down below in the comments, which voice did you think sounded more robotic, mine or the computer’s? And don’t worry, you won’t hurt my feelings. To see more videos like this, please consider subscribing. Otherwise, I’ll see you next time.