Mobile application "Reader" is now for Android

Three years ago, we released the Reader mobile app for iOS, and many users began to receive emails asking if we were going to release a version for Android. The development has been completed, and the official launch of Reader on Google Play has taken place .



“ Reader ” is a mobile application that reads text books and documents loaded into it using the technology of synthesis of Russian speech. In fact, it allows you to voice in real time any book (.fb2, .epub, .txt, .rtf). Books are voiced directly in the mobile device, without access to the Internet.



The application is undemanding of device resources and works stably on devices with 2 CPU cores and 512 MB of RAM.

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When developing the Android version of Reader, we approached the process from scratch, so it is not much like the version for iOS. This mainly concerns the user interface with the application, it became convenient to operate with one hand while walking or driving. It will be interesting to know your opinion whether the application has become better from this.







A small video review of the "Reader" for Android







Future plans

Refine the functionality according to your wishes, increase the speed and stability of the application. We will adjust the sound of speech synthesis, make it even better.

We plan to add new voices and speech synthesis languages. We have a few more voices in Russian in reserve, as well as the English-language “Carol” and the voice of “Assel” in the Kazakh language.



You can listen to their sound here .



About speech synthesis technology

The TTS speech synthesis engines used in the Reader are a proprietary development of the MDGs. They use the original hybrid implementation of several well-known technologies: Unit Selection and statistical modeling of speech parameters based on hidden Markov models (HMM). The first provides the natural timbre of the sound of the synthesized voice, and the second allows you to give the voice the necessary intonation, semantic and emotional coloring.

In addition, the MDG speech synthesizer is able to understand the meaning of the text, depending on the context: the large volume of the dictionary provides the correct interpretation in ambiguous situations and the correct pronunciation of abbreviations and abbreviations.



Other amenities

The “reader” for Android will be free (with the “Vladimir” voice preinstalled). The remaining votes can be bought at 35 rubles. The test period for each vote is 5 days.



Answers to some frequently asked questions

Is it possible to embed the voices of our speech synthesis in other readers, for example, in FBReader?

- No, the voices built into the "Reader" are not yet embedded into other applications. So that our speech synthesis can be used in other applications, we plan to release a separate Plug-In application.



How can we get our speech synthesis and embed it in your project / application / site ?

- To do this, we have speech synthesis SDK for OS: Windows, Linux, iOS, Android, Raspberry and the cloud Internet service VoiceFabric.ru



That's all for now. Listen to the book with pleasure!