The new Chromium powered Edge keeps getting better and better. If you are in the habit of making your browser read out webpages, then there is some good news on the horizon.
Robotic sounding screen readers may soon be a thing of the past.
True story.
That is because Microsoft has introduced a new feature in its web browser that brings natural sound voices to Edge. Future versions of the browser may offer these improved voice options for those who use the Read Aloud feature in Edge
This is the feature that allows users to listen to the text content of the webpages they visit.
The software titan detailed this new addition in a blog post, referring to it as cloud-powered voices, for some particular reason. But the feature looks sublime, all things considered.
According to the company, it developed these more natural sounding voice options in response to user feedback that mentioned that the default speaking vices sounded robotic and unnatural. And the process to install different language packs was also very time consuming.
Anyway, you now have two options for these cloud-powered voices.
Neural and Standard.
The Neural versions are the ones that sound the most lifelike, as they are powered by deep neural networks. The Standard ones, however, though sound clearer than other voices, as not quiet as realistic as the former.
If you want to try out these voice options, do note that this new feature is not yet available in the current version of Microsoft Edge, or even in the stable Beta Channel version.
You will have to download either Dev or Canary channel builds of the web browser to get access to these sweet, sweet voices.
