Text-to-Speech Wizardry – Niclas Bergstrom, ReadSpeaker

Jul 20, 2020

Brand recognition has long been about logos, taglines, and advertising campaigns, but what if you could use a voice that sounded like your brand to add another level of brand awareness? This is one of the many interesting services ReadSpeaker, an innovative text-to-speech company offers, and its founder and CTO, Niclas Bergström, joins us today. 

In this episode, we learn more about the company and the variety of products they offer. From web-based SaaS solutions for management and educational systems to hyper-customized voices for brands, their solutions can be deployed to any hardware ranging from embedded systems to high-capacity servers on their cloud. From there, we dive into what it takes to build a voice for brands. There are so many characteristics that make voices what they are, which is why brands and ReadSpeaker need to have a common understanding of what makes a voice what it is. 

As the industry evolves, so too do the expectations of what a synthetic voice can do, and while people have become much more accepting of them, it’s still important to realize their limitations. We discuss these constraints along with when to use a human voice over a synthetic one. From there, we dive into what the tech giants are doing in the space, and why Niclas believes that small companies will lead the innovation charge rather than the last players. 

We round the show off by talking about the future of the industry generally as well as for ReadSpeaker specifically, and there are some big things on the horizon.


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