FAQ Voice Reader Home 15 – Frequently Asked Questions

Voice Reader Home 15 is a discontinued software version.
Support and new activations are not supported anymore.
For clients with Voice Reader Home 15 we offer an Update to Voice Reader Home 22 for a reduced price.

Please contact us via:  Contact form

Answers to the system requirements

1. System requirements, supported applications and file formats

  • Operating system: Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8 (32- and 64-bit)
  • Available disk space: Up to 1 GB for each voice
  • 2 GB RAM
  • Internet access for product activation

The following file formats are supported by Voice Reader Home 15 and can be opened directly in the editor via FileOpen:

  • Text files(*.txt )
  • RTF files(*.rtf )
  • Word files (*.docx, *.doc )
  • HTML files (*.htm, *.html )
  • MHT files (*.mht )
  • Epub files (*.epub )
  • PDF files (*.pdf )
  • ODT files (*.odt )

Using Linguatec Voice Reader Home 15

13. The graphical user interface is not displayed as usual anymore or reading aloud is not possible anymore (but worked before)

Perhaps you also obtain the message “Voice Reader Home 15 Edit is not working anymore”.

Please delete the xml files of ‘Voice Reader Home 15’. They will be regenerated by the application within its next start.
The folder under which they can be found depends which installation options you had chosen.

If you installed for all users: C:\ProgramData\Linguatec\VoiceReaderHome15\Data\Layout
If you installed for the current user: C:\Users\<Username>\AppData\Roaming\Linguatec\VoiceReaderHome15\Data\Layout

If you can’t find the folder ProgramData, please ensure that in the folder “Options” of your Explorer (on the tab “View“) the setting for hiding files and folders is set to “Off“.

Please check further on in the Task Manager, that no process of ‘Voice Reader Home 15’ is still running. If yes, please close the processes manually and restart the application.

14. How to use Voice Reader Home 15 with another voice or in another language
The software Voice Reader Home 15 contains one voice.
If you wish to add an additional voice (also for an additional language) we offer in total 67 voices (in 45 languages) which you can buy additively . To add the new voice simply run the setup.exe installation wizard with the new voice from the CD or the downloaded folder (if you bought the software as download version) . The existing installation will be recognized and the additional voice will be installed. You can select it in Voice Reader Home 15 on the “Read” tab in the group “Language & Voice”.

15. The pronunciation of a word can be different if it is standing alone or in a sentence context
It can occur in particular cases that the pronunciation of a word is different if it is read out alone as a single word or on the other hand in a sentence context. This is related to the Voice Reader Home text to speech technology. We have specified it here.

16. The punctuation is also being read out
Punctuation is normally not read out by Voice Reader. Please check if the empty spaces after the punctuation marks in the selected text have been left out. A text is typographically correct when an empty space follows a punctuation mark.

17. Distortions and interruptions occur when using the voice output
If distortions or interruptions occur during voice output, the processing speed of the hard disk is not fast enough. The voice output implemented in Voice Reader Home 15 is based on dynamic processing. No more than 200 MB can be loaded into the memory at once. No more than this can be processed dynamically. The data for voice output are however very large. If the hard disk does not have the corresponding resources to be able to process the data fast enough, a possible consequence is “stuttering” of the voice output.
This behavior is rectified by a faster hard disk.

  1. This can often be achieved by regular defragmentation of the hard disk. Fragmented areas of memory are then put back together. This makes data processing faster again.
  2. Please ensure that the Voice Reader Home 15 program directory has been selected as a trusted directory in your antivirus software. Otherwise antivirus processes will regularly access it and also slow down data processing.
  3. As a test, close all other applications apart from Voice Reader Home 15 and compare the behavior.
  4. Ensure that your computer meets the minimum system requirements for Voice Reader Home 15.
  5. Please be sure to have chosen as reading option “by sentence” or “by paragraph”.

18. End of line is end of sentence

Voice Reader Home 15 has a versatile editor with formatting options and therefore the use of line brakes has influence on the reading segmentation of Voice Reader Home 15.
A line break can be initiated by a hard line return or a soft return / line feed.

  1. A soft return / line feed is generated when pressing the Shift key simultaneously with the Enter key. If the displaying of the formatting characters in the text is active, the soft return is visualized by the symbol ¬ .
    A soft return will be interpreted as end of sentence (and will therefore cause a pause) when the reading segmentation is set to: “by sentence” (“Reading” tab – group “Settings” – button “Options ” – Section “Reading Options” – Read and highlight text: by sentence)
    Soft returns / line feeds won’t influence the reading, when the reading option “by paragraph” is active.
  2. A hard line return is generated when pressing simply the Enter key. It is displayed as: ¶
    A hard line return is interpreted in Voice Reader Home 15 generally as end of sentence.

19. How can line breaks be removed automatically in a text document
If you want to have read out a text document in which hard line returns are used at the end of the lines and you want to avoid that the end of the line is interpreted as end of sentence (see also FAQ “end of line is end of sentence”) you can remove them automatically with the following steps.
Please select the whole text (CTRL+A), copy it with CTRL+C into the clipboard and paste it into the Editor of Windows (Start – All Programs – Accessories – Notepad) via Ctrl+V.
Please save your text as HTML document (File – Save As – Save as type: All Files – File Name:. <*Filename>.html). Now open the HTML document in Voice Reader Home 15 (“File” tab – button: “Open”) and let it be read out to you.