What kind of MP3 do you get?
Every download is an MP3 at 24 kHz, 48 kbps, mono. Those settings are made for speech: a single voice does not need stereo, and a lower bitrate keeps files small enough to email or upload without waiting. In numbers, the file grows by about 6,000 bytes for each second of audio, which is 0.36 MB per minute.
You get the same format with every voice and every language. There is no quality menu to set and no watermark, jingle or spoken credit inside the file.
How long will the file be, and how big?
The table below uses our own measurement: the US English voice Ava at 1× read 787 characters per minute, counting letters and punctuation but not spaces. Other English voices in the same test read 758 to 848 characters per minute, so treat the figures as estimates.
| Text length (characters, no spaces) | Audio length at 1× | MP3 size |
|---|---|---|
| 1,000 | about 1 min 16 s | about 0.46 MB |
| 5,000 | about 6 min 21 s | about 2.3 MB |
| 10,000 | about 12 min 42 s | about 4.6 MB |
| 50,000 | about 64 min | about 23 MB |
| 100,000 | about 2 h 7 min | about 46 MB |
At 1.25× the audio and the file are about 20% shorter; at 1.5×, about a third shorter. Other languages differ: our Japanese voices read 309 to 335 characters per minute, because each character carries more sound. If you count your text in words, the words to minutes calculator gives the length directly.
One file for a long text
You do not need to split a chapter or a lecture script by hand. The converter cuts the text at sentence boundaries, makes the parts at the same time and stitches them into one MP3 in the right order. What you download is a single file that plays from start to end.
A single text can be as long as you need. The only ceiling is a rate limit for cloud voices of about 60,000 characters per minute from one IP address; free text to speech with no character limit explains how that works for books and long reports.
Where does the file go?
- On a computer, the MP3 lands in your browser’s usual download folder.
- On iPhone, open the Files app, tap Browse and then the Downloads folder. If it is not there, Apple suggests checking the downloads list in Safari.
- On Android with Chrome, open the Files app, or open Chrome’s menu and tap Downloads to see the file and share it.
Rename the file as soon as it downloads, for example “episode-12-intro.mp3”, so you can find it later in your editor. If the download does not start, the download help page covers the common causes.
Using the MP3 in a project
The file drops straight into most video editors, podcast tools and course builders. If the MP3 is a voiceover for a video, see text to speech for YouTube. Browser voices are under the OpenRAIL-M license, which allows commercial use with restrictions; for cloud voices, read the commercial use page first.
What this converter does not do
- It makes one voice per file. For a dialogue, create one MP3 per speaker and put them together in an editor.
- It does not add background music or sound effects; mix those in your editor.
- It does not read SSML tags; line breaks and punctuation set the pauses.
- It does not accept PDF, Word or TXT uploads yet: paste the text instead.