This is cool! I have some specific thoughts and questions on the TTS software that you list for personal use, and how other TTS / podcast options might compete with this Library:
What I personally do to listen to an article I’m on is I say “Read it” to the Google Assistant on my phone, and it reads aloud any article I view on my phone in a really nice AI voice. They have a few nice voices to choose from, with different accents. I think it’s even a bit more human-like than the current one used by The Nonlinear Library, which is already pretty human-like. So I think I’m likely to stick to using my Google Assistant than the Library, although this could be useful for when I want to download and listen to EA articles when I’m offline.
My phone is a Google Pixel 4a running Android 11, but I think this read aloud feature is probably available on any Android phone with Google Assistant. Have you tried using it? If yes, what made you not mention it in this article? I haven’t tried using Evie, and I think I tried @Voice before and wasn’t pleased with it.
My guess is the Google Assistant is a bit better (in terms of ease of use and voice quality) than Evie or @Voice. It has these 2 other cons though (aside from not being usable offline), so maybe that’s why it might still be valuable for Nonlinear to make the Nonlinear Library:
There’s no way to queue a next article to read out loud
Once you close the app, it doesn’t save where you are at
Have you or others you know tried Speechify as a TTS? I know the founder. I tried it before and they have nice premium voices, but I find it somewhat expensive at around $140/year.
Do you pay for Natural Reader? If yes, do you generally recommend the paid plan?
I guess there’s less need now for the EA Forum podcast now that we have the Nonlinear Library?
Re: google assistant, the way I use TTS is I queue up a lot of posts and listen to it while I’m getting ready in the morning or working out, etc, so having to select a new one each time would stop me from using it. Additionally I often am listening to long articles, so it losing my spot if I stopped listening wouldn’t work. Pocket has that glitch for me about 30% of the time, which is a huge reason I don’t use it.
Re: Speechify, I haven’t tried it! If somebody does and finds it good, please say so in the comments!
Re: Natural Reader, I do indeed pay. I found the 20 minutes a day limit prohibitive. I’d recommend it to other people if the cost isn’t too high for them and they’ll use it regularly. ($10/month).
Re: EA Forum podcast, I think there still could be use for that because lots of people will continue to have a strong preference for human voices. It would especially be useful for posts that are heavy in math or graphs which they would be able to describe out loud, like how the Astral Codex Ten podcast does it.
I use speechify, its voices are quite good but has the same formatting issues as all the rest (reading junk text) which I think is the real bottleneck here
Got it re: Google assistant, EA Forum podcast, and Speechify!
Re: Natural reader:
do you use the Premium or the Plus plan? The Premium plan is only $5/month if paid annually, while the Plus one is $9/month if paid annually.
Have you tried using the mobile app? I downloaded it just now. The reviews aren’t great but maybe the latest update fixed some issues. I don’t think it has the ability to let you queue next articles though, so I might try out @Voice again.
This is cool! I have some specific thoughts and questions on the TTS software that you list for personal use, and how other TTS / podcast options might compete with this Library:
What I personally do to listen to an article I’m on is I say “Read it” to the Google Assistant on my phone, and it reads aloud any article I view on my phone in a really nice AI voice. They have a few nice voices to choose from, with different accents. I think it’s even a bit more human-like than the current one used by The Nonlinear Library, which is already pretty human-like. So I think I’m likely to stick to using my Google Assistant than the Library, although this could be useful for when I want to download and listen to EA articles when I’m offline.
My phone is a Google Pixel 4a running Android 11, but I think this read aloud feature is probably available on any Android phone with Google Assistant. Have you tried using it? If yes, what made you not mention it in this article? I haven’t tried using Evie, and I think I tried @Voice before and wasn’t pleased with it.
My guess is the Google Assistant is a bit better (in terms of ease of use and voice quality) than Evie or @Voice. It has these 2 other cons though (aside from not being usable offline), so maybe that’s why it might still be valuable for Nonlinear to make the Nonlinear Library:
There’s no way to queue a next article to read out loud
Once you close the app, it doesn’t save where you are at
Have you or others you know tried Speechify as a TTS? I know the founder. I tried it before and they have nice premium voices, but I find it somewhat expensive at around $140/year.
Do you pay for Natural Reader? If yes, do you generally recommend the paid plan?
I guess there’s less need now for the EA Forum podcast now that we have the Nonlinear Library?
Thanks for the thoughtful reply!
Re: google assistant, the way I use TTS is I queue up a lot of posts and listen to it while I’m getting ready in the morning or working out, etc, so having to select a new one each time would stop me from using it. Additionally I often am listening to long articles, so it losing my spot if I stopped listening wouldn’t work. Pocket has that glitch for me about 30% of the time, which is a huge reason I don’t use it.
Re: Speechify, I haven’t tried it! If somebody does and finds it good, please say so in the comments!
Re: Natural Reader, I do indeed pay. I found the 20 minutes a day limit prohibitive. I’d recommend it to other people if the cost isn’t too high for them and they’ll use it regularly. ($10/month).
Re: EA Forum podcast, I think there still could be use for that because lots of people will continue to have a strong preference for human voices. It would especially be useful for posts that are heavy in math or graphs which they would be able to describe out loud, like how the Astral Codex Ten podcast does it.
I use speechify, its voices are quite good but has the same formatting issues as all the rest (reading junk text) which I think is the real bottleneck here
Got it re: Google assistant, EA Forum podcast, and Speechify!
Re: Natural reader:
do you use the Premium or the Plus plan? The Premium plan is only $5/month if paid annually, while the Plus one is $9/month if paid annually.
Have you tried using the mobile app? I downloaded it just now. The reviews aren’t great but maybe the latest update fixed some issues. I don’t think it has the ability to let you queue next articles though, so I might try out @Voice again.