I’ve been using the free voices on Natural Reader’s Chrome extension, which apparently come from Google, and aren’t that bad. Now it turns out that these are exactly the same voices I hear when I use Readlang’s Read Aloud button, but the speed is different. Whereas on Natural Reader they are natural speed, using Readlang’s button, they are very slow.
I’m wondering if there’s somewhere in Readlang’s settings where I can change the speed. Or maybe it’s to do with Chrome, and it’s in Chrome’s settings where I should look. I’ve tried to find some way to change it, but without success. Any ideas, anyone?
You should be able to customize the speed using the sidebar accessible via the button at the top right of the reader page, then going to the AA tab and scrolling to the bottom. See here: Introducing Read-Aloud - Readlang Blog
That’s great, Steve, thanks for that. I thought I’d probably missed something. The weird thing is that Natural Reader’s x1 is faster than Readlang’s x1, but I think yours sounds more likely and is more comfortable for listening.
I find this Read Aloud feature goes really well with the Generate Story feature, as the stories can first be done as a listening exercise, my listening being much weaker than my reading. And although Natural Reader’s extension works well when listening to the whole story, Readlang’s Read Aloud is much more convenient if you want to stop to check words.
A bIg thank you for all you’re doing. Readlang is definitely my language learning “home” now. I was first drawn by the simplicity and cleanness of the interface (in contrast to that of a more famous competitor), and now the recent incorporation of AI has really made all the difference.
Incidentally, I think there’s a comment elsewhere about improved voices. Maybe this could be part of the higher paid package, along perhaps with direct YouTube transcription, which has also been mentioned recently.
Anyway, I’m more than happy with your platform as it is. Keep up the great work.
I thought the 1X speed sounded a bit too fast, especially as a learner of the language, so I applied an extra slowdown factor so that when you set it to 1X it’s actually playing at 0.85X.