Balabolka v2.15.0.813 Updated
Andrew Lee on 20 Mar 2022 Change history
- 15MB (uncompressed)
- Released on 12 Mar 2022
- Suggested by I am Baas
Balabolka is a feature-rich program to read text aloud from a variety of file types including DOC, RTF, PDF, ODT, FB2 and HTML. The program uses built-in Windows speech tools, but lets you fine tune voices, including rate and pitch, and a substitution list can also be applied to improve the quality of the voice's articulation. The program supports customized font and background color, skins, control reading from the system tray or by the global hotkeys.
The program can save to a variety of audio formats and quality levels, and can include synchronized text to external LRC files or in MP3 tags inside the audio files. When the audio file is played with players on a computer or on modern digital audio players, the text will be displayed synchronously (in the same way as lyrics for songs).
The program includes batch conversion tools from of a wide variety of document formats to audio or plain text and a file compare tool, file splitter and screen magnification window. Command-line functions also supported.
| Category: | |
| Runs on: | WinXP / Vista / Win7 / Win8 / Win10 |
| Writes settings to: | Application folder |
| Dependencies: | Microsoft Speech API (SAPI). This is included by default in Win2K and above. |
| Stealth: ? | Yes |
| Unicode support: | Yes |
| License: | Freeware |
| How to extract: |
Download the "Portable Version" ZIP package and extract to a folder of your choice. Launch balabolka.exe. Optionally, delete unnecessary language and help files. |
| Similar/alternative apps: | DSpeech |
| What's new? | See: http://balabolka.site/changelog.txt |
35 comments on Balabolka
FireRabbit
2021-10-07 15:38
Since it had been over a year since my last comment and the last time I used Balabolka, and since then I've seen several update notices for it, bought a brand new computer, and moved on to windows 10 I figured I'd give it another try since I really don't like being tied to preparatory software beyond my OS.
Overall it's much worse than I remember. I use text to speech a lot. After using textaloud for over a year daily I've gotten very use to how it sounds and Balabolka is... the best way I can think of to describe it would be jagged and deformed. The pacing of the voices is all wonky, there's too many bizarre out of context pauses, and the ever growing lag is still a major issue. [I use Ivona voices, which is perhaps the issue as Balabolka may be overly focused on just working with Microsofts built in voices?]
v2.15.0.802
FireRabbit
2020-03-29 22:26
After years of using to use Balabolka I officaly gave up and bought textaloud a couple days ago.
Balabolka has for years had a strange bug where the longer it runs in the background the longer the delay it takes when you hit the "read selected text" hotkey.
TextAloud doesn't have this issue and not having to restart Balabolka every hour feels like a massive weight has been lifted from my shoulders.
v2.15.0.737
Mixture
2014-08-07 20:37
@Checker:
I did something far better.
I uninstalled the flawed ver. 2.10.0.572 portable and installed desktop ver. 2.9.0.565 of Balabolka. My Avast AV doesn't complain anymore.
v2.10.0.572
Checker
2014-08-07 17:27
@ Mixture: Checked with 'virustotal'. Only Avast shows it as 'Win32:Malware-gen'. It's 1/54.
Suggestion: Delete 'Avast' from your system.
v2.10.0.572
@FireRabbit: As Balabolka is somewhat of a niche application, your input is highly appreciated. Thank you.
v2.15.0.802