The Speaker Lite converts post or webpage into human-like speech in more than 120 voices across 30+ languages and variants. It applies groundbreaking research in speech synthesis and Google’s robust neural networks to deliver high-fidelity audio.
Notes
Speaker Lite includes only the basic functions. Go Speaker PRO to get more awesome features. Buy a license and gain access to all hidden features. You can compare the functionality of the free and Pro versions of the plugin here.
To open the plugin settings in the WordPress Sidebar menu go to Speaker
In the plugin settings, there are several tabs responsible for various groups of plugin settings.
Voice Settings
The voice tab describes the basic settings of the plugin, the selection of voices and features of speech synthesis.
API Key File
When you first run the plugin, you need to connect the Key File. How to get the Key File you can learn from the article About Key File for the Speaker & Voicer WordPress Plugins
Now used
Shows which voice is selected now, and also allows you to listen to the voice sample chosen with default settings.
You can also listen to the Supported Google Voices and Languages in the Google Cloud Documentation. The Speaker Lite supports only the Standard voice types.
Language
Using the filter, you can choose from the table the voices you need. After selecting a language, you can filter the table by voice type and gender. To activate all voices go to the Pro version.
To select and activate a voice, click on the row in the table. The selected voice will be highlighted in blue.
Audio Profile
You can optimize the synthetic speech produced by Cloud Text-to-Speech API for playback on different types of hardware. For example, if your app runs primarily on smaller, ‘wearable’ types of devices, you can create a synthetic speech from Cloud Text-to-Speech API that is optimized specifically for smaller speakers.
Speaking Rate/Speed
This setting changes the voice playback speed. The smaller the number, the slower the synthesized voice will speak, and the more the amount will be, the faster will be the speaker. The normal speed is 1. You can select any value in the range from 0.25 to 4. The higher the number, the faster the speech.
Pitch
Speaking pitch, in the range [-20.0, 20.0]. 20 means an increase of 20 semitones from the original pitch. -20 means a decrease of 20 semitones from the original pitch. The default value is 0
Volume Gain
The setting controls the audio gain via the slider. There are available values from -10dB to 15dB.
Before Audio Pro
In this text filed you can add text that will be added at the beginning of the audio file. For example, you can add an invitation or copyrights.
ProAfter Audio Pro
In this setting, you can add text that will be added to the end of the audio file. For example, you can add farewell or copyrights.
Read the Title Pro
The option allows you to voice to the Title of the current post/page when generating audio.
The setting can be applied only to the default Speech Template “Content“
Automatic synthesis Pro
This setting enables automatic speech synthesis when you press the Update button or Publish Button.
Notes
This option can significantly increase the cost of your monthly Google Cloud quota.
Turning on this option every time you make changes to the page and save them all the contents of the old page will be sent for speech synthesizing. For example:
- you created a post of 5000 characters in size and Published it – your content automatically sent to Google Cloud and voiced. 5000 characters will be written off from your balance
- you added one comma (one character) to the text and click Save – 5001 characters will be automatically sent for speech synthesizing. 5001 symbols will be deducted from your balance
Design
The design tab contains settings related to the design of the Player and its surrounding elements.
Player position
You can select one of the available player positions:
- Before Content
- After Content
- Top Fixed
- Bottom Fixed
- Before Title
- After Title
- Shortcode [speaker]
Important
Some themes may have problems displaying the player in Before Title and After Title positions. Switch plugin to other position in such cases.
You can easily add the Speaker WordPress Plugin player anywhere on the page using the shortcode [speaker]And you can also show the player with an audio recording of another post, for this use the shortcode [speaker id=PAGEID] PAGEID is the id of the page of the audio version of which you want to use in the player.
You can find out the page ID in the address bar during editing or from the page code.
Style
The plugin has five player styles that you can use on the website pages. You can also customize any of the presented player templates with CSS.
Round Player
Core WordPress player with round edges:
Rounded Player
Core WordPress player with rounded corner:
Squared Player
Core WordPress player with right angles and straight edges:
WordPress Default Player
Regular WordPress audio player:
Browser Default Player
Default browser player without any styles and scripts. The appearance of the player is different in difаerent browser:
Please note that when choosing a Browser Default Player, a standard WordPress player will be disabled on your site. This will have an effect for all players on all pages of your site.
To fine-tune the design of the player, use the CSS class .mdp-speaker-box
Background color
This setting allows setting the background color of the player. This is possible for all modes except WordPress Default Player and Browser Default Player
Download link
The setting determines how to display the download link. You can choose one of these options:
- Do not show
- Backend Only
- Frontend Only
- Backend and Frontend
Post Types(from version 3.0) Pro
A new tab that contains settings of choosing the types of posts for audio generation and applying speech template as default for every post type.
Post Types
Select the post types, including custom post types to work with the Speaker. The available types are in the drop-down list. Once new post types are added to your site, they will be displayed in the list.
Speach Templates
The settings section allows you to apply Speech Templates as default for each of the post types that you select in the Post types field. You can create a new Speech Templates when editing or creating a page/post.
Save Changes
Do not forget to click Save Changes after changing plugin settings. After clicking this button, the settings will be saved and applied to all pages of the website.
Now you can proceed to use the plugin on the pages of your WordPress website. Please read the article Converting WordPress page to speech and Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML) in the Speaker WordPress plugin.
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