Balabolka

Many times, it so happens that being a distance learning student and a full time professional you have to consult the online reference material available for exam preparation or simple learning. However, a situation that you don’t wish to read out from the computer screen as you are tired and exhausted after a hard day’s work; or another situation that you have multiple e-books stocked up on your PC but you don’t wish to strain your eyes by reading from the computer screen and would fancy some storytelling to you. Balabolka 1.29 comes to our rescue in both these situations with its unique text to speech utility helping the user to listen instead of reading on his own.

Balabolka opens with a neat and organized interface with the major options placed at the top pane and right below are located some vibrant icons having their own functionalities. The program effectually converts text to speech in the simplest manner and helps the user to sit back and listen. All the computer voices installed in the computer system are available to the software and the text can be saved in any format as such like WAV, MP3, OGG or WMA file. The software supports skins that allow the user to customize the window appearance a\in any way desired by the user and the text can be viewed in any form like DOC, RTF, PDF or HTML, besides effective controlling of the hot keys that allows for scaling the sound and pitch. Moreover, the user can also apply special substitution to improvise quality of articulation and pronunciation.

Balabolka scores impressively on account its innovative functionality and useful working in helping professionals and offering enjoyable learning experiences for its users which earns it a score of 4 rating points.

The program converts text to speech. All computer voices installed on your system are available to Balabolka. The on-screen text can be saved as a WAV, MP3, OGG or WMA file. The program can read the clipboard content, view the text from DOC, RTF, PDF, FB2 and HTML files, customize font and background colour, control reading from the system tray or by the global hotkeys. Balabolka uses various versions of Microsoft Speech API (SAPI); it allows to alter a voice's parameters, including rate and pitch. The user can apply a special substitution list to improve the quality of the voice's articulation. This feature is useful when you want to change the spelling of words. The rules for the pronunciation correction use the syntax of VBScript.