Fantastic
It’s really helpful, I don’t know what I would do without it . Voice’s are realistic not computerised. Very simple set up and very fair price
Great app
I’m a big fan of this app. I love reading but recently it’s been causing a big strain on my eyes. This gives me a chance to continue with the stories with realistic voices. It has the option to download for offline listening and the creator seems to be constantly improving and updating the app. I’d definitely try it if you’re looking for a good text to speech app. My only complaint is that it seems to log me out quite frequently bit it’s not too much of a hassle.
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Wanted this to be good
Unfortunately the app is completely broken. Every time i go to add any form of media it prompts me to subscribe even though i am. Even when it didnt do that the single time ive gotten it to work, there were various error pop ups midway through generation that did manage to resolve themselves. On the actual output, there is basically 0 discrimination between what is clearly the target text versus ui elements. Additionally, the narration sounds terrible and does not reflect what is currently the widely available speech generation quality. Dont waste your time.
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Correct Pronunciation
This app somehow pronounces the most mispronounced words correctly. Great job!
Helpful!!
I am someone who benefits from reading while also hearing the text read aloud, it helps me to better engage with the article or book. I am a teacher of students with a variety of barriers to learning and I have found that this type of app is helpful for students to access the same content as their peers, I wonder if it would be possible to make a kid-friendly version…
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Frateca
This app has saved me! Frateca has helped me to cut down time especially when driving/traveling. Instead of reading I can listen to my documents on my way. It’s a great app and I’m excited about the update!
The update
After the update it’s practically un-usable. As this was part of my work process I’m a day behind on a deadline. I get needing to work out kinks, but to have that sort of price tag on a product that becomes un-usable overnight is not tenable. I’m SO sad because I’d really found a rhythm and had incorporated it into my routine. Truly a lesson of don’t fix what isn’t broken.
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Avoid this buggy cash-grab TTS app
This app started off sounding promising with natural voices, but it quickly turned into a frustrating mess. The interface is awful, also clunky, ugly, and hard to navigate. Then, uploading a document of 3,796 words, to review if the app was worth paying for, the conversion repeatably failed, "cannot complete the conversion" - bringing up the pay-for-play before hearing my document!
An upsell before hearing a personal document is absolute nonsense. Rubbish! Avoid this buggy cash-grab TTS app.
An upsell before hearing a personal document is absolute nonsense. Rubbish! Avoid this buggy cash-grab TTS app.
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App doesn’t open half the time
I have paid for a monthly subscription earlier this year, used for a few weeks. I tried again this month and the issues were still unresolved. I wouldn’t pay for this until its biggest problem (below) is resolved.
Biggest problem (deal breaker):
This app just doesn’t open half the time I need to use it. I assume it is under maintenance, but considering it happens so frequently and the app is completely unusable at these times, it’s not worth it. I’m not paying to not be able to even access the app… If the dev was able to figure out a way to send updates out in installments rather than needing to take the entire service down periodically, that would be much better… At least send out notification warnings a few days in advance if the system will be down.
Pros:
1. The voices are generally better than the Siri text to speech voices (not always).
2. The speed adjustments are more versatile than the accessibility text to speech for Mac OS.
3. Much less expensive than other text to speech services online.
4. The dev sometimes responds to emails if you want to speak to him directly. He didn’t respond to my second email.
Cons:
1. Sometimes skips random words for no reason.
2. Sometimes only reads the first few paragraphs and then cuts off, unable to process the whole pdf.
3. Unclear privacy policy. The app and website both need a clear statement about whether data input for TTS processing (or for subscription ID/other data) is collected, distributed, or used for any purposes. Especially important for students and academics who wish to use this app for academic texts which may be outside the public domain.
4. I read a lot of journal articles, and it would be good to be able to process them without repeating the headers and quotes in brackets. If there were an algorithm which accounted for these, or a preliminary processing step where the user can select which text to remove from the final product, that would be helpful.
Biggest problem (deal breaker):
This app just doesn’t open half the time I need to use it. I assume it is under maintenance, but considering it happens so frequently and the app is completely unusable at these times, it’s not worth it. I’m not paying to not be able to even access the app… If the dev was able to figure out a way to send updates out in installments rather than needing to take the entire service down periodically, that would be much better… At least send out notification warnings a few days in advance if the system will be down.
Pros:
1. The voices are generally better than the Siri text to speech voices (not always).
2. The speed adjustments are more versatile than the accessibility text to speech for Mac OS.
3. Much less expensive than other text to speech services online.
4. The dev sometimes responds to emails if you want to speak to him directly. He didn’t respond to my second email.
Cons:
1. Sometimes skips random words for no reason.
2. Sometimes only reads the first few paragraphs and then cuts off, unable to process the whole pdf.
3. Unclear privacy policy. The app and website both need a clear statement about whether data input for TTS processing (or for subscription ID/other data) is collected, distributed, or used for any purposes. Especially important for students and academics who wish to use this app for academic texts which may be outside the public domain.
4. I read a lot of journal articles, and it would be good to be able to process them without repeating the headers and quotes in brackets. If there were an algorithm which accounted for these, or a preliminary processing step where the user can select which text to remove from the final product, that would be helpful.
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Great App
I’ve tried most of these types of apps and this one is the best. It’s great at reading technical docs. The voice is smooth, even at high rates, and the pronunciation is extremely good. Sounds like a person reading.
Best human voice / need a page range selection feature for longer documents
This app is in my experience the best TTS app. If I had one suggestion it would be that users should be able to select a page range from a longer document, so that the app doesn’t need to convert 200 pages to an audio file, but just a small range, a chapter say. This would be very practical and is already a feature of apps like Neural Reader. It would also be great, though perhaps more ambitious, if the app could read landscape-oriented PDF pages that have two columns of text. But when you try to feed it this kind of document it says it can’t. Apart from these things I love this app!
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Keeps me reading!
I love that I can listen to my book in the background! It helps me when I have a lot of things to do in my day. The audio is pretty engaging too!
Better than speechify
Cheaper too
Very Useful
I’ve been using Frateca for about a week and really enjoy it. The free 20 minutes certainly goes fast and I definitely enjoyed the free trial! I have had a couple of technical issues but emailed support and they were resolved almost immediately! Definitely recommend.
Less expensive than Natural Reader for similar features
Voice pacing and cadence aren’t quite as good as Natural Reader but still quite usable. Developer should make it clearer how many free uses you get - the pop up to pay is a bit jarring. Overall impressive app
Broadly good, but has some minor issues that need to be optimized
I saw the developer of this app advertising it as catering specifically to academics, so I decided to give it a shot as I’ve been looking for something that would allow me to kind of ambiently peruse the sorts of papers that are of lesser importance and can be listened to while walking around etc. In this capacity, the app largely does what it needs to do—the process of uploading a PDF into the app for conversion is pretty straightforward and convenient, and the AI voice largely does a very good job of reading the contents in a way that’s digestible—a big plus for this app is that the AI voices sound a lot more natural than Speechify’s, which still sound kind of stilted unless you’re using the gimmicky celebrity voices (forgive me for not wanting to have Mr. Beast or Gwenyth Paltrow read me my academic literature).
There are some minor jank elements that ought to be ironed out, though. Notably, the AI voice doesn’t really know what to do with section headings, so it will begin by reading out unnecessary things like the DOI, publication info, author’s e-mail etc., and will do so in such a way that makes it sound like one big run-on sentence. Page number headers/footers are read out when they should be ignored. Words that are broken up by a hyphen and a line break are read out as though they are two separate words. In-text citations (e.g. Chicago style) are read out as though they were part of the natural flow of the sentence rather than parenthetical citations (it would be great if there was an option to toggle having these read out at all, since it becomes quite annoying to have them constantly read out for the sorts of papers that one would subject to a text-to-speech treatment). All of these things constitute minor trip-ups during the listening experience which are hardly the end of the world, but it would be nice if the dev dealt with them in some capacity (especially since there is a limit of 20 minutes of text per day before you have to buy the Premium version, when the standard length of an academic article in my field is in the 30-40 minute range).
There are some minor jank elements that ought to be ironed out, though. Notably, the AI voice doesn’t really know what to do with section headings, so it will begin by reading out unnecessary things like the DOI, publication info, author’s e-mail etc., and will do so in such a way that makes it sound like one big run-on sentence. Page number headers/footers are read out when they should be ignored. Words that are broken up by a hyphen and a line break are read out as though they are two separate words. In-text citations (e.g. Chicago style) are read out as though they were part of the natural flow of the sentence rather than parenthetical citations (it would be great if there was an option to toggle having these read out at all, since it becomes quite annoying to have them constantly read out for the sorts of papers that one would subject to a text-to-speech treatment). All of these things constitute minor trip-ups during the listening experience which are hardly the end of the world, but it would be nice if the dev dealt with them in some capacity (especially since there is a limit of 20 minutes of text per day before you have to buy the Premium version, when the standard length of an academic article in my field is in the 30-40 minute range).
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OKAY app
Rarely get the promised full 20 minutes. Usually get like 11. Also it billed me before even though I had already cancelled free trial days ago. Had to contact Apple directly to get money back. Voices are fine.
Simple and easy to use!!
Out of so many of these text to speech apps (which are heavily priced) this one has been my favorite, many options for types of voices, is affordable and worth using in the long run
Text to speech
Great app
Useless
If I have to pay to use it, is it free?
