New Reader Mobile App for iOS Released

A little background
Two years ago, we released the first version of the " Reader " for iOS (Link to iTunes ). This is a mobile application that reads aloud the books and text documents loaded into it using Russian speech synthesis technology. In fact, it allows you to voice any book in real time (.txt, .doc, .fb2). Books are voiced right on your mobile device, while constant access to the Internet is not needed. During this time, "Reader" installed about 100 thousand users.


New in the application
In the "Reader" the design has been updated. Support for the latest version of iOS has appeared. We worked on ergonomics and navigation, taking into account the comments of our users.
Made it possible to install additional votes. So far, there are only 4 of them (2 male and 2 female), but in the next update we plan to make support for already seven votes.
We also added the ability to work with the font - you can choose the font style and change its size.

A short video review of what Reader can do



Future plans
We plan to expand functionality and improve usability, taking into account the incoming wishes and comments of our customers in the AppStore.
In the near future, the introduction of voice acting in English (until the end of 2014), and support for Kazakh - it will be implemented in 2015.
Now we are developing the “Reader” for Android, and we plan to put it on Google Play by the end of September. A plug-in application is also being prepared for easily integrating our synthesis into other applications and third-party readers.

About speech synthesis technology
Our speech synthesis technologyuses an original hybrid implementation of several well-known technologies: Unit Selection and statistical modeling of speech parameters based on hidden Markov models (HMM). The first of them provides the natural timbre of the synthesized voice, and the second allows you to give the voice the necessary intonational, semantic and emotional coloring.
In addition to the naturalness of the timbre and intonation of the voice, the speech synthesizer is able to understand the meaning of the text depending on the context, ensuring the correct pronunciation in ambiguous situations due to the wide volume of the dictionary, abbreviations, abbreviations and much more.

Helpful information
We recently made the TTS SDK for Android and iOS - so now our speech synthesis technology can be used in third-party mobile applications. Interesting? Write voicefabric@speechpro.ru
There is still the opportunity to voice Internet sites and video clips with our synthesis, for this we launched a separate project: VoiceFabric.ru

PS I supplemented the article with a video review.