Creators Want Cheaper, Simpler Text-to-Speech

“You could try LexVoda — it handles transcription and AI legal drafting file notes for client meetings and dictation. Everything runs locally on your device, so it works offline and your recordings/transcripts don’t need to be sent to a cloud AI service.”

“Just watched the clip, the way the text appears while you're still talking is really smooth. Most dictation tools have that awkward pause while they figure out what you said, so seeing it land in real time is a nice change.”

“It has the memory of a fish, it doesn't remember in the same conversation what you said a minute ago even if you tell it to remember. Voice dictation is very clumsy when I transcribe my voice with the microphone, it takes a long time for what I'm saying to appear, and by the time I press Enter, half a sentence I had already said is missing. In ChatGPT, voice dictation is much faster. Enter is also very slow, and the PC app runs slowly despite me having a powerful PC. I don't know, th”

“The OCR + speech-to-speech + background jobs combo is oddly specific, and I think you're underselling it. That's not really a general app builder feature set. That's for document-heavy, voice-heavy businesses. Clinics, logistics, lending, CA firms. Places that still run on paper where half the staff won't type into a form but will happily talk to it. Lovable and Bolt have nothing there and honestly can't, it's not their market. Which makes me think your actual buyer isn&#”

“Hello there everyone! Hope you can help me, i would like to know of there is a free text to speech app or website where can i translate some of our voice over for our video training materials. What can u suggest? submitted by /u/No_Word_5686 [link] [comments]”

“No worries. If it helps, I have a strong British accent. The output made me sound American.”

“Thanks mucha appreciated. What voice clone app are you using? I was using 11 labs but they flagged it and said I could do criminal intent with this, It's a sript that can't be changed. Either way I had to use Modal and host it on our site”

“Thanks I appreciate it. Yes depends on the person, sometimes it picks up more of an accent than necessary. Often it's turned me into an Aussie! It will improve. Thanks for your help.”

“Thank you to all 25 users. Narration Offline Studio launched exactly a month ago, and Im super happy that 25 of you have given it a try. This is a huge milestone in my life, and It is all thanks to you guys. That is why I am giving away a single free download key which is linked below t9 whoever reaches it first. I hope to continue this tradition every month. For those who are new to NarrarionOS, it is a local Audiobook generator, that takes in any kind of texts like PDF, EPUB, DOCX, Txt, html,”

“My mom and I are big note-taker enthusiasts. To perform my son-ly duty, I've tried a lot of meeting note-takers in hopes to give her the best recommendations… Our criteria were: Cheap / No subscription In-room speaker detection Complete data privacy Mac and Windows support Bonus: Customizable AI summaries Upload external recordings Intuitive enough that Mom would actually use it Nothing checked every box, so I started building one for her as a little side project. Eleven months later, I’m so”

“I’m working on Safe Notes and would value a focused usability test. It captures system + mic audio from desktop calls, creates a live speaker-labelled transcript, generates a local recap with decisions/action items, and lets you ask follow-up questions that open the supporting transcript moment. Everything in that workflow, including the chat model, runs on the device. It supports Windows, Intel Macs, and Apple Silicon Macs without requiring a GPU. The app is free right now. Rather than another”

“Agree with this. For that amount of job I would go with the locally running Whisper model. Even being an online transcription service builder I would not recommend it as it will cost you around 200 euro for this job. If you are not limited in time (local models run slow) go on with MacWhisper or another open source projects that can host Whisper models for free.”

“Thanks, I will check it out! And yeah, I always considered it a hack (you do multiple runs and the whisper does not just magically become a stateful decoder, but I needed the broad language support and it also allowed me to run diarization at any point) and now am looking into Parakeet and others, as it seems RNN-T can still beat the new llm based ones in lots of scenarios...”

“I gave up almost completely on writing the last year or so as my disease took the use of my hands. I tell everyone I've looked into paid voice to text before and it's not great, but to be honest it's been 5 or 6 years since I really did. I can pay up to a few hundred US bucks probably. I just can't stand not writing. I almost cried when I tried my computers built in one and could actually write more than 500 words in a like once a week session. But looking it up more, and my crap”

“Before the newest IOS update, I really wanted to get good voice notes with transcription, so I can go out for a walk and get my thoughts together instead of sitting in front of the screen all day. I’m also a huge fan of vintage tech, that’s why “Cassette - Speech to text” came into existence! Even though the newest voice notes are much better than in previous version of IOS, maybe someone will enjoy this retro vibe. And the easy and visual organization of the voice notes. It’s 100% free and loca”

“I recommend RiverScript . It’s a transcription app that can also transcribe podcasts . Unlike Otter, it can record all system audio on Windows and Mac, so there are no bots or complicated setups involved. Just press one button and record everything playing on your system — calls, podcasts, or anything else. After that, you can transcribe the recording directly in the RiverScript app. RiverScript also lets you transcribe existing audio and video files without having to upload the entire file to t”

“Most of the thread is naming tools, which is the less useful half of the answer. The more useful half is a test protocol, because every accuracy figure a vendor publishes is measured on clean single-speaker studio audio, and your show is not that. Take one real 10-minute chunk of your own podcast, and deliberately pick a bad stretch: crosstalk, someone off-mic, a guest with an accent, a couple of proper nouns. Run that same chunk through every candidate. Then compare four things: Corrections per”

I keep hearing about Eleven Labs but that is quite robotic.

“None of you mentioned that Whisper can run without installing anything. It runs in the browser using WebGPU, so the audio never leaves your computer, and there are no minute limits or sign-up requirements. And to save you some time: it doesn't label speakers. If your podcast features interviews, listen to @garse; he’s right—you’ll realize the issue by the second episode. If you record solo, it doesn't matter, and the text comes out clean. As for what @krishh155 mentioned—that’s the point”

“I use Notion this way a lot, and the biggest thing for me was avoiding the separate record, transcribe, copy, paste loop. I ended up using usevoicy. For me it works best for daily notes, project updates, and drafts. At least now I am not starting from a messy raw transcript.”

“Hi, sorry for the issue. I checked if GitHub had shit the bed but no outages have been reported today. Do you mind restarting the app, trying to fetch the image again, and then copy paste the logs here? (just go the the sidebar tab right below the server and click 'Copy All' on the top right)”

“Recorded 15 seconds of myself talking normally, like telling a friend a quick story, quiet room, nothing special. Fed it in, and now anything I write can be read back in a voice that genuinely sounds like me, not a robot approximation. Runs through Claude Code, which is the version of Claude that can actually run commands rather than just chat. You point it at Fish Audio, a voice cloning tool, and hand it your clip. Step one, teach Claude how to use it, this is one line pasted into Claude Code:”

AI tools were used in the development and testing of this application.

“Quick update on Speakr. For those who've never seen this before, Speakr is a self-hosted transcription app that works with Whisper and local LLMs. Upload or record audio, get diarized transcripts, then chat with them or get summaries using the model of your choice. Agentic Inquire (opt-in beta) Instead of a single retrieval pass over your library, an agent searches, lists recordings, and reads transcripts iteratively until it can answer. Ask "what did we decide about the pricing change,”

“I like to convey emotions in my stories with my voice, so I can't use free or low-quality alternatives.I tried Eleven Labs and wow, I loved the result, but a 9-minute video used up all my subscription credits (121k) Lol. So, do you know of any options that give the same result? submitted by /u/nosequepingahacer [link] [comments]”

“Hey r/SideProject ! Like many developers and writers, I love using voice dictation to write at 150+ WPM. But existing tools like Wispr Flow or Superwhisper either require monthly cloud subscriptions ($12–$20/mo), lock you into macOS, or stream your raw microphone audio to remote servers. I spent the last few weeks building OpenDictate , a completely free, local-first, open-source AI voice dictation app for your desktop. What it does: Global Hotkey, Anywhere : Press Ctrl+Alt+Space (or ⌘+Shift+Spa”

“The simplest workable version is one Voice chat per experiment, with spoken prefixes such as ‘Observation:’, ‘Action:’, ‘Decision:’, and ‘Question:’. Every 15–20 minutes say: ‘Checkpoint—summarize only what I explicitly said, keep observations separate from interpretations, and mark missing values UNVERIFIED.’ At the end, ask for a timestamped Markdown log and copy it into your actual electronic lab notebook. For true 3–4 hour continuous capture, I would still run a separate recorder/transcripti”

“That funnel already exists actually, mic permission, orb tap, recording started, entry saved, been logging it a while. Permission isn't the drop, over 90% of people who get the prompt grant it. The bigger drop looks like it's earlier than that, before the funnel even gets going, I still need to sit down with the exact numbers to say where. Ads are basically already off, the campaign mostly ran itself down mid august and I didn't put more budget behind it.”

“Otter’s free tier is limited to just three file imports, ever. I wouldn’t recommend it.”

I use otter.ai. Works well.

“I don’t really care that the things I make will invariably be scooped up and ingested into the training data.It’s rather that I think we all ought to stop making software that is primarily useful to businesses, because there is no more joy in that with AI-written PRs driving maintainers into burnout. Big tech finally has no more excuses as to why they don’t maintain all the bedrock libraries themselves. So I say, let them do that.And on the other hand, since anyone can vibe code something now, t”

“Small but overdue one this update. If you're using voice cloning, you used to have to record your sample somewhere else, find the file, then upload it. That extra step is gone now. Record instead of upload Clone a voice > there's a new "Record instead" tab next to the file drop zone. Press record, talk for up to 15 seconds, done. It's saved and probed automatically, exactly like an uploaded file would be. While you're recording you get a live level meter with the -6”

“Yes, you want to avoid another inbox. Your ideal setup: you talk and it lands in the right place for how you work e.g. as a database item or a page, with relevant fields filled in. The important bit is interpreting the transcription and mapping it to your unique Notion setup. That is possible. You just need a step where the AI references recipes/skills you define. Have you explored this?”

“Try this one: recapp.work , it charges by credits so you are in control of times”

“thanks, your solution sounds like a beefed up version of my solution. mine's way dumber on purpose, no models or tunnel, it just grabs the voice note offline and drops it in the vault, that's the whole thing. what phone did you get the assistant swap working on? that cross-oem part is the bit i'm still not sure holds up outside pixel. and it'll be open source, so if you ever feel like comparing notes, i'm down.”

where is the app?

“vox is great, that presets setup is basically where i want to end up. only catch is it's ios only and closed source. this is the android version of that idea, offline, open source, and you don't even unlock the phone. same goal really.”

“After 12 years in UX and product leadership, I'm taking a sabbatical to build solo. I'm validating a privacy-first macOS/iOS app. It uses local Whisper models for speech-to-text and a local quantized LLM to refine transcripts and generate Excalidraw-style vector diagrams directly on-device. No cloud APIs, zero recurring token costs, and 100% data privacy. Given the memory requirements of running local models, would you prefer a Mac-first launch before I try to squeeze this onto iOS? Open”

“If your machine specs are decent, I'd recommend giving GeekLink a try. GeekLink runs on Whisper models, which works well for large batch audio processing. You can set custom proper nouns/vocabulary before you start a recognition run. Try transcribing one episode first, check where it slips up, and feed the recurring proper-noun mistakes back in as a prompt for the rest. GeekLink can do all of that. One thing it has that I haven't seen in other tools: it flags the spots that are likely wr”

Feature request: Optional bilingual live transcription in Voice Mode

This is insanely cool, would be a lifesaver

“Davinci resolve. One time payment of $300 or so. Transcribe whatever you want”

“You can test it out on breezblue's playground or use it locally, its only ~7GB. submitted by /u/Gohab2001 [link] [comments]”

“For cleaning up noisy audio, I'd definitely run it through a denoiser first. Adobe Enhance Speech does a decent job, and so does ElevenLabs. If you go the ASR route, Whisper Large-v3 is pretty solid, especially for noisy stuff. Just keep an eye on the settings to avoid hallucinations. For long files, AssemblyAI has good limits, and it's reliable.”

“I use Craig in discord which creates a multi track recording (I just have a discord session going for all parties). I then download the flac and have a local workflow that converts to wav and then uses whisperx to transcribe. I also create an error report based on an examination of the transcript to identify possible hallucinations that I glance over.”

“Great concept! Voice-first interaction for research papers fills a nice niche for passive learning during commutes or walks.”

“I was planning on using FishAudio S2 Pro as I thought it was free but later learned about _Fish Audio Research License Agreement_, which prohibits its use for commercial projects and deployments without paying for license even if I'm using my own rig. I see it as a very sly move on their behalf. My project is rather simple, something along the lines of audiobooks but on YouTube. I want to know how do they identify if someone has been using their product without a license for commercial proje”

“yeah the manual steps are what kills it, if you cant automate the transcription part the habit just doesnt stick”

https://freepodcasttranscription.com/

“Transcript Workbench Pro runs Whisper locally with your choice of model and has batch processing. Free on the App Store at https://apps.apple.com/us/app/transcript-workbench-pro/id6796451803?mt=12”

“Transcript Workbench Pro runs Whisper locally with your choice of model. Free on the App Store at https://apps.apple.com/us/app/transcript-workbench-pro/id6796451803?mt=12”

“I’d skip the voice memo inbox entirely: dictate with the Notion page open, then clean it up there instead of moving a recording through three places. Since you mentioned privacy and Wispr’s recent bugs, I’ve settled on DictaFlow because it can run local models offline, with cloud models available when you want them.”

“Still hanging on to Whisper for transcribing and translating audio in real time locally. I play mmos with Chinese people and paying for translation APIs would get expensive quick.If anyone has suggestion for fast realtime and good enough alternatives with low vram, since I game at the same time, I'd love to know.”

“me too. The multitrack options for mic bleed, coupled with the NR, Cut Fillers and transcription have saved me hours of editing. The fact it spits out split track too not combining everything to one file so i can still fine tune is great. I still listen through everything but I'm not stopping every two minutes to edit out a filler word. Its unreal.”

“My test would be pretty boring: open a real Notion page, dictate a two-minute note with names, bullets and one correction, then count how much editing is left. Repeat the same test with each tool. The lowest time to usable text, within your privacy boundary, probably wins. Otherwise voice capture just becomes another inbox.”

“Auphonic's noise reduction is world class, and the transcription option is free with the same noise reduction run. Huge fan of Auphonic.”

“If you’re on a Mac, then I’d recommend MacWhisper. They have a free version but honestly I just bought the app. One-time purchase, download the model locally and transcribe as much as you want.”

“Hi everyone, I’m working with long audio recordings (several hours of MP3s) that have noticeable background noise, room reverb, and inconsistent quality. My goal is to clean up the speech and get accurate text transcriptions. I'm open to both cloud-based APIs/services (like Adobe Enhance Speech, AssemblyAI, Deepgram, ElevenLabs, OpenAI API) and local open-source models (like Whisper Large-v3, DeepFilterNet). For those who handle long, noisy recordings regularly: Best Pipeline: Do you recomme”

“I thought I filed this before, but I can't find it. I activate dictation, and immediately, before I can even say anything, the preview transcript starts cycling through a bunch of strange phrases like this. <img width="479" height="76" alt="Image" src="https://github.com/user attachments/assets/f8d141a7 65a3 474e ab2a 7c0e1925ef33" / Seems like the model is too sensitive silence or something but I hope you can provide that feedback because it's very off putting, especially if I want to collect m”