Noor
Newsreader clarity for exposition-heavy scenes
Synthesis
Free Online Text to Speech for Any Script
Ordinary text to speech converts a block of text with one voice. That is the right tool for narration and the wrong tool for a scene. This page covers the synthesis layer itself — what it can be told to do, and where it stops.
At a glance
- What it is
- A free AI voice generator and text-to-speech workbench built for scripts: it works out who is speaking, gives every character their own voice, lets you direct the emotion line by line and exports a finished mix — a full-cast audio drama rather than one narrator reading every part.
- What you paste in
- A script, pasted as text. Screenplay format, “Name: line” dialogue and ordinary prose with dialogue tags are all read as written, and so are the em-dash conventions used in Spanish, French, Portuguese and Russian. A note in brackets at the start of a line, or a line that is entirely inside brackets, becomes that line's acting direction: it is performed rather than spoken, and you can edit it in the line list. There is no file import, so paste the text instead of attaching a document.
- What you get back
- One mixed MP3 on every plan. SRT subtitles from Plus upward — written from your script rather than transcribed from the audio, so names are spelled right and the timings already line up. Per-character stems, one full-length track per character plus the mix, come as a ZIP on Pro. No WAV export.
- Cast and voices
- 40 library characters, each with a portrait, a persona and a sample. Behind them sit 10 base voices — 4 female, 5 male, 1 androgynous — and the same 10 serve every language. Inside one project no two characters are given the same base voice until all 10 are taken, so a scene of up to 10 speakers separates cleanly; past that, two characters share a voice and are told apart by persona and by the direction each line carries. You choose the character, not the base voice. You can also clone your own voice by reading a short consent statement aloud — up to 3 per account — and give it to any character; a cloned voice reads in all 9 languages and follows line speed, but does not act out emotions or directions.
- Languages
- 9: English, 简体中文, 日本語, 한국어, Deutsch, Français, Español, Português, Русский. Every character performs in all of them — a character is a persona, not one recorded take — and a project's language is fixed when the project is created. Outside English you get the language's common accent; regional accents cannot be picked and are not promised. We have not had native speakers audition every language, so run your own lines through it before you commit.
- Emotion and direction
- Every line is performed by an AI voice actor working from a written direction, so the 7 emotions (neutral, happy, sad, angry, fear, whisper, excited) are acted rather than faked with settings. A resting emotion per character is available on every plan; overriding emotion line by line is Pro only, and 5-step speed control (0.75×–1.25×) comes with Plus and Pro. Regenerating a line gives a genuinely different take in the same voice, and editing one line re-synthesises only that line.
- Price and open beta
- A credit is one character of script, and credits are spent only when you download — generating and previewing cost nothing, within a ceiling of 30 lines per 24 hours on Free and up to 2,000 on Pro. Free is a one-time pot of 4,500 credits, about 5 minutes of finished audio, with 2 cast members per project. Paid plans are Basic $5, Plus $19, Pro $29 a month, 10% off yearly. Payments are not live yet: during the open beta every account gets the full Pro feature set at no cost, but a commercial licence still comes with a paid plan once plans open.
- What it cannot do yet
- Voice cloning covers your own voice only, and a cloned voice reads the words without acting out emotions or directions. There is no file import, no WAV export, no pronunciation dictionary, no pitch control, and no way to pick a specific base voice or a regional accent. No language has real child voices: child parts are played by adult performers, the way animation has always done it. Characters live inside one project and do not carry over to the next.
Voices to try it on
Quill
YouTube explainer voice that never sounds bored
Dorian
Audiobook baritone for literary fiction and slow reveals
Solène
Continental accent, unhurried, very expensive sounding
Halcyon
Meditation-adjacent narrator for slow, quiet scenes
Indie
TikTok voiceover: fast, flat, faintly amused
Wren
Bedtime-story narrator, slow and warm, never wakes anyone up
Hale
Documentary narrator with a hand on the listener's shoulder
What it does
Seven emotional registers
Neutral, happy, sad, angry, fear, whisper and excited, set per line rather than per document. Every register can be set on every voice, and each line is genuinely performed in it rather than assembled from a pitch or speed adjustment — the library tags say which registers a character is written for, not which ones it can be directed into.
Pace control
A speed multiplier per line, on Plus and Pro. Pace does more work than people expect: it carries age, authority and emotional state more reliably than pitch does.
Stage directions are performed, not read
A note in parentheses at the start of a line, or a line written entirely in parentheses, becomes direction for the performance rather than words to say — it is passed to the voice and shown next to the line, where you can edit it. Parentheses in the middle or at the end of a spoken line are left alone, because those are usually meant to be said. Scene headings and action lines are a different matter: they come through as narration, so delete the ones you do not want heard.
Punctuation as direction
A full stop is a real pause, an ellipsis a longer one, a question mark lifts the phrase end. Line breaks create gaps. Your script layout is your timing control, which is why this page keeps telling you to split lines.
Provider-independent
The synthesis engine sits behind an interface, and it has been swapped before. If we move to a different one, the same project renders through it without any change to your casting or direction — what a line sounds like can shift, but nothing you set up has to be rebuilt.
Every voice on every plan
The library is not a paywall. Plans differ on cast size, emotion control and minutes — not on which voices you may use.
How to use it
- Paste the text
One speaker or many. For a single voice, this behaves like any other text-to-speech tool.
- Choose the character
Pick from the library's forty characters — filter by age, gender, accent and style rather than scrolling. Audition on your own text, not on sample text.
- Set pace and register
Start with neutral and, on Plus or Pro, a slightly slower pace than feels right. Almost every first attempt is too fast.
- Fix the pronunciations
Audition every name and invented word before you render anything long, and respell or hyphenate in the text the ones that come out wrong — there is no pronunciation setting.
- Render and check on real hardware
Play it on a phone speaker as well as headphones. Most audiences are on the phone.
Emotion control, and why less is more
The instinct with per-line emotion is to use it everywhere, and the result is uniform mush. Audiences read emotion by contrast, so a scene with two directed lines and twenty neutral ones lands far harder than a scene where everything is pushed.
The workflow that produces good results is: set a resting register per character, render with defaults only, listen straight through, then mark the two or three lines where something actually changes. In a five-minute scene, directing five lines by hand is about right.
Writing that a synthetic voice can perform
Four habits carry most of the difference. One intention per line — a sentence that swings from delight to horror is rendered as an average of both, so split it. Punctuation deliberately, because it is your timing. Interjections as their own lines, because a bracketed note directs how a line is said rather than becoming a sound of its own. And short sentences for low voices, which lose intelligibility fast over long clauses.
None of these are workarounds for a limitation. They are the same notes a director gives a human performer, for the same reasons.
The limits, stated plainly
Physical vocalisation — screaming, sobbing, laughing while speaking, grunts — is the weakest area and will remain so for a while, because these are breathing events rather than speech events. Generate them for placeholder if you need to, and plan to replace them.
The second limit is interpretation. A synthetic read is a clean, consistent, well-paced performance of what you wrote. It is not a set of decisions about subtext. For most work that trade is worth making; it is worth making with clear eyes about which half of it is which.
Frequently asked questions
How is this different from other text-to-speech tools?
For single-voice work, not very. The difference appears the moment a script has more than one speaker: casting, a voice that stays fixed per character within a project, and per-line direction are the product, and the synthesis is a component underneath them.
Which emotions are supported?
Neutral, happy, sad, angry, fear, whisper and excited, on every voice. Each line is acted in the register you set rather than adjusted after the fact, so the difference is audible — but how far a register is pushed varies with the line, so audition a directed line before you rely on it.
Can I control pitch?
No — pace, yes, on Plus and Pro; pitch, no. Pitch-shifting a voice far from its natural range produces artefacts that are obvious on good headphones. Choose a character in the right range instead.
Does it read numbers and dates correctly?
It reads them by the conventions of the project's language, and usually gets them right. Text that mixes conventions is where mistakes appear, so listen to the numbers first — and spell a figure out in words if it matters how it is said.
Will my lines always sound exactly the same?
Within a project, yes, until you touch them: a rendered line keeps the audio you heard until you edit that line. Ask for it again and you get a new take — same voice and same character, slightly different delivery — which is the point, because a read you did not like is one click away from another one. Across projects, the engine sits behind an interface and may be replaced one day; casting and direction carry over, the sound of a take can shift.
Can I use it for accessibility narration?
Yes, though for accessibility you want the clearest voice rather than the most characterful, and you should test at 1.5× or faster, since many screen-reader users listen well above real time.
Cast your first scene tonight
Paste a script, let CastDub assign a voice to every character, and export a finished drama.
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