Voice Dream - Text to Voice 앱 리뷰

I’ve had this app for years. It’s been the best app I think I’ve ever had, and I’ve recommended it to several people. I don’t know if any of them have tried it, but I don’t plan to stop recommending it!

Every voice I’ve tried sounds awful. I don’t understand the positive reviews. The app is full of bugs and doesn’t work right (it frequently tells me I don’t have a plan) and I cancelled my plan but still got charged by Apple. Now Apple won’t issue a refund so I’m stuck using an app that sounds god awful

It usually stalls, and, most the time, doesn’t even start reading aloud. Mystified by the generally positive ratings. I tried cancelling by contacting the developer, and they didn’t reply.

The basic voices sound more natural than the AI ones do and they are very stilted. The AI voices are stunningly robotic. It’s important to me that the reading sound somewhat like a real person or my mind will wander badly. So I was disappointed. The Edge browser has better voices and it’s free.

I have been a voice dream reader since the beginning. it feels like almost a decade of using voice dream. It's a solid product and hasn't really changed much over the years specifically the voices. And the new subscription model is a completely baffling decision on the part of the developer because the voices are not a they are the same voices. I have been using for years and years now where is the AI enhance? What would I justify paying for that I don't already get in my existing app? I am absolutely stunned at how every decent application is trying to cash in on the subscription model. Unless there's a reason to subscribe there, shouldn't be a subscription model even if that means the developer can no longer afford to work on the product. You have to justify that monthly recurring cost.

Great app, still after years select all rewind doesn’t work. How could such a simple to fix bug exist?

“We are unable to play your document. Play error 5” Ok, then I’m unable to pay. Free trial cancelled.

I really like this app but there’s still a lot of glitches. The replay jumps back, freezes, changes voices, etc. I probably will cancel after trial. A bit too pricey considering the glitches.

This keeps happening on every line it says the same thing over and over it needs to be fixed it’s getting annoying

Was $14.99 as a one-time purchase (in 2023). Now charging $80/year! This is out of control SaaS ridiculousness but delusional developers who want to ride a gravy train without doing anything. All the dev work was done. Maintaining this costs next to nothing. These guys are just exploiting you. Their base customer is the uneducated who spends all their income and will die broke.

This app has been left in the dust by others that have realistic AI voices. See Eleven Labs Reader. The only reason I would use this app these days is if I lived in a lead coffin and did not have internet service. Since this app moved to a subscription model it’s hard to justify using it to save costs unless you have excessive cellular data costs (since better voices use more cloud data). Also, from a book reading perspective using only on-device voices, maple reader and book fusion are low cost alternatives that have more book reading features with similar text to speech capabilities.

I’ve used this daily for many years. So many good things to say about features and usefulness. One bug that should be fixable is pause play through clicking on AirPod pros or through Siri. It often requires pulling the phone out to restart playing after pausing. I understand if I listen to music, ask messages to read me some that resources have been committed and asking the phone to know what I want is too much. But there is a routine disconnect of the pause play function that works reliably in most apps.

The app frequently crashes while reading and suffers from significant lag (especially in rich text mode) when reading epubs and pdfs alike. The iCloud sync is slow and occasionally the whole library deletes itself off one of my devices and it has to re-sync the whole library.

I initially got this app many years ago and was very happy with it. However now I am having many issues rendering the app unusable. First the option to open a document (pdf) in voice dream does not show up when I hit the share button on either safari or chrome. I have to download it and upload it to listen. Once I start listening the voice changes and then often gets stuck repeating the same line. I reached out to tech service and none of their suggestions have resolved my issues. Disappointed for the most expensive app purchase I have made.

I paid $39 in 2023 for the voice dream suite and all its features. I paid outright, no subscription. And now I can’t even access the features that moved me to purchase in the first place. Shameful and unethical. I wouldn’t trust a company who treats customers this way.

Even without its unmatched text-to-speech feature, this app excels as a reading platform, outshining Apple Books with its ease-of-use.

Once you pay, there’s zero app support. I had an issue with restoring my purchase. Contacted “Support” and it went into the ether, never to be acknowledged. Be careful about giving this app your money. Fortunately, my friend works at Apple and was able to resolve the issue. But, not everyone is as fortunate.

It’s had a bad text-repeating bug and a lockup bug for me since version 5.0.0. I finally got it to work reliably again by changing to a NeoSpeech or Acapela voice instead of an iOS voice that I’ve used for several years.

I’m honestly shocked this comes so highly recommended. There are free apps like eleven who use much more natural voices. If a free app can do it, then an app that costs $79.99 should be able to — at minimum

I paid for this app as a disabled student with severe Dyslexia and a hearing impairment. Now that this company is pay walling on a sub-model, they are making access impossible. I don’t trust the developers anymore so I don’t even want to update this app. Once a less greedy alternative appears, I will be sure to recommend and refer it to anyone. Thank you for showing us another product to boycott. No one likes the subscription model, especially when they ALREADY PAID for this app before it became one! I feel robbed. Even add-ons in Firefox are better than what has happened to this app.

This is just a garbage app compared to what it was years ago. Even the paid voices are terrible compared to what used to be free.

I Love It

Ni siquiera pude seleccionar una voz, se queda pasmado y solo reproduce la voz de IA, que va súper rápido

This app has been life changing.

I’ve been a user for about two years and in that time I’ve watched as the prices increased, and the user interface has not improved whatsoever. In addition, the user experience and the actual quality of the text to speech functionality leaves a lot to be desired, as certain PDFs and documents cannot be read in the order that you would expect for them to be. I see a lot of updates about premium voices that I can pay for, but meanwhile be Voice that I already paid for. Sounds sort of awful and never improves and an addition to that they’re just never seems to be any integration with the built-in voices that are available on my iPad. These may be understandable limitations, but still the user experience is not good enough. And the last slight, of sorts, is the fact that I had to pay to use this on both my Mac and my iPad at the same time and was being double charged simply to use the same feature set that I had already paid for. I was able to confirm with some of my professors that the iPad version of the app was previously available on Mac and that that was the version of the app that they had, yet they removed our ability to use the iPad app on Mac because they preferred to charge exorbitant fees. I also spoke to numerous students in my program who all looked at this app as a way to read books and to read papers, more efficiently and almost all of them told me a different price for the subscription price that was being offered to them in the app. For some people it was $80 and for some people it was under that and for others it was over that all within the same time period. The last main point that I wanna make is that if you were using this to try to read a textbook it’s going to be extremely difficult. The feature set is buggy and the contents may not be read in the order that you need. The user interface is an extreme limitation that will effectively prevent you from navigating the length of your document which could be 500 or more pages because the way that the table of contents is structured in the user interface, it just makes it very difficult to move around long documents and get what you need out of it. And for this reason, I basically have stopped using this app, even though I paid for it and continue to have an active license because it’s just not worth it. That’s the unfortunate part.

Yay, my favorite voice, Heather is back!!👏🏻👏🏻. I appreciate this developer trying to do right by the users. I wrote to the developer to complain about the removal of Heather whom I have used over the last 13 years and he promised that they would return her with an update and here she is! Good job 👍🏻

Wanted to like it but there are just better services with better voices that don't sound like robots.

I purchased this app and paid to unlock premium voices, but they took them away and made the app subscription only. Way to scam and alienate your loyal users.

I loaded a book in PDF format, but the play button is grayed out and will not engage. I cannot find the information to get past this obstacle anywhere.

Like other reviewers, I paid for advanced voices and have used them for several years. They have just been taken away. They now want a subscription for something I already paid for. Seems like this fraud/theft should be illegal. I’m looking for a way to report it to Apple. Unfortunately, Apple only benefits from more subscriptions that people forget to turn off. Ugh. I just reported them to Apple, which you can do by scrolling down to the report a problem link at the bottom of this page. Just took a moment. I encourage you to do the same. Use the words fraud, theft, etc..

Can’t even use without signing up for the trial. You guys just want us to forget so you can charge us.

Suddenly, I was using the app and then was told I had to pay for the voice I was already using for the past several years and it was now a subscription.

I want to buy voice dream for my wife, my daughter, etc., but how do I transfer all of my pronunciations over to their phones? Please instruct me. Thank you! Joseph Johnson

$70/year after a one week free trial ends? In this economy? I think not. No idea if it works well because at that price I wouldn’t use it even if it were a godsend.

I paid for the Heather voice which is a natural sounding human voice. They took it away and gave you all awful AI ROBOT voices! They lie and say “we are fixing it”. No they are not. They have STOLEN something I bought and only the suckers who are just now finding this app think robot voices are fine. This app is USELESS! Do not buy!!!

I did the trial and already had problems - iCloud was on and files that I add in computer Voice Dream app weren’t showing on my phone app with same email account. I had to text myself the PDFs to then add to Voice Dream app on my phone. The same day the trial was over the app started to crash and not open. I contacted Costumer Service right away and they still haven’t answered. I contacted Apple Store and asked for a refund and they denied. So now I’ve paid $79 for an app that does not work. I deleted the app, reinstalled twice and didn’t work. Two days later it worked (today) but now all the files I had on my account aren’t there anymore. I’m traveling, don’t have my computer with me, so I can’t access any of my files. This app is beyond frustrating. Not to mention the voices aren’t very clear. I just started a trial on “Speechify” and I’m blown away with the quality and functions of the app. Would rather spend $139 and have an app that works than $79 and have a broken one that I can’t even use. For reference my trial ended on Feb 1, 2025. Today is Feb 3, 2025. They stole my money and didn’t provide what they promised. Run away from this app!

I paid $25 for this app a couple years and paid for a handful of their “enhanced” voices for about $5. They weren’t great, but they worked for what I needed them for (Helping me to read dry academic books and pdfs). They tried a subscription before and people pushed back and they got rid of it, but in today’s modern tech, they just waited and re-introduced the subscription. The app isn’t good enough to warrant a subscription like many other apps that try the same tactic, but with these changes and other reviews, it’s time to retire this app to the dustbin of history for me.

I paid for one of the voices years ago, Heather, and used it for everything. Now with these changes they’ve removed it from my library. I guess paying for a feature doesn’t guarantee you actually get that feature anymore…don’t waste your money paying for upgrades - you won’t get to keep them!

Voice Dream used to be amazing. It recently took away the quality reading voices from the Voice Pack I had purchased. It has also taken away features I paid for including comfortable reading pauses between sentences, comfortable voice speeds, and more. It is no longer the quality product I paid for and is trying to force me into an expensive, inferior subscription, which I will not purchase from them. The Voice Dream LLC violated Apple’s terms of service. Apple please have them restore users’ purchases.

The app is great however the billing from the app to the website and the subscription plans are glitched. I have two accounts under the same email address I'm being billed for and there is no live support. Refund one of my accounts!

but even the AI enhanced voices sound unnatural and hard to follow. It's like they don't leave enough pause between words for me to understand them. when I'm listening to podcasts (with humans talking), I set the speed to 1.25x or more, but with these voices I needed to slow them way down to hear the separation between words... and then it's unnaturally slow. pros: it actually does import DRM-free epubs correctly, unlike most of the other apps that introduce line breaks or errors into the text.

Why it’s not working

Don’t waste your time

The app crashes when scanning pages constantly. It does not remember what you was working on as well and you have to start again each time. When reading the text it jumps around the page.

This app use to be something I used daily but now is riddled with bugs and losing voices I purchased. This app only wants to squeeze you dry of money for a lackluster product. AI is at 1% of what other apps are capable of.

So I’ve finally been worn down and purchased the subscription because I use the app daily and I realize there was some cost to keeping an updated but obviously, I’m not happy about having the voices that I chose and purchased deleted. That being said, the only voices that I can tell, have anything to do with AI are the ones that Apple provides the others are SAPI5 or worse are extremely flat and frankly a bit annoying which is sad because I know a cappella has some emotive voices on their website for use. I know I purchased them. Remove the claim of AI, get some AI or at least get some better voices with some emotion attached they’re available. Oh yeah, and it reread sentences about every 20-30 paragraphs

When I upload scans it jumps around the text instead of reading one line after the other. It’s impossible to follow what it is saying when it does that. It also sounds so boring and robotic eventhough it says it is enhanced with AI.

I’ve used this app almost every day for over 5 years now and now much find an alternative. The new AI updates are horrible and make the voices unlistenable.. the old voices were WAY better. Please give us the old version back!

The voice are terrible!!!! They are so cheap sounding I can’t stand listening to them. Update your voice technology on par with Speechify and this would be the best text to speech app on the market. Don’t give us a bunch of aweful voices. Give us one or two high quality voices and in my mind you would have speechify beat! The program works great! Give us one or two high-quality voices Please!! I would be happy to pay for better voices .