Text To WAV for Windows

Text-to-speech software is helpful for presenting text to anyone who is visually impaired. It's also helpful for anyone who needs extra editing help and doesn't have an extra set of eyes. As its name suggests, Text to Wav offers a way to convert written text into sound files, but thanks to a vague interface and lack of help, we're reluctant to recommend it.

The program's user interface is pretty bland, with most of the controls crammed into the left corner of the toolbar. There are a few self-explanatory buttons for adjusting your text size and font. We also found slide controls for adjusting the voice rate, pitch, and volume. A drop-down menu makes it appear as though you have multiple options for the voice type, but the only one we found was "Microsoft Anna" in English. To the right were various menu options that were vague to us, such as Convert at Two Voices, Speak the Input Sentence, and Automatic Change Voices. These options might be recognizable for people who have worked with this kind of software before, but it wasn't clear to us. A Help menu offers a link to online help, but it's written in Japanese, so we were out of luck. Sure, we were able to input text into the appropriate field and play it back using the Speak command, but beyond that, we were at a loss.

Overall, if you're accustomed to these types of programs, it might be worth giving Text to Wav a shot. But if you're new to text-to-speech software, we recommend you look for something with more guidance.

Text to Wav comes as a ZIP file and is accessible after extraction.