Why listen instead of read?
Reading a 40-page paper requires sustained visual attention. Your eyes tire, your focus drifts, and you end up re-reading the same paragraph three times. Listening is different. You can absorb the same content during a commute, a walk, or while doing dishes, without opening a single tab.
Research consistently shows that listening comprehension and reading comprehension activate the same cognitive pathways. For expository text (academic papers, textbooks, reports), retention from listening is equivalent to reading, and for many people, higher, because there is no temptation to skim.
Recitare's TTS is built on this premise: your reading list should not shrink just because your eyes are busy.
How does Recitare read documents aloud?
When you press play, Recitare does not send your raw file to a TTS API. It first parses the document into clean, ordered prose, removing page numbers, headers, footers, footnotes, and figure captions that would sound nonsensical when read aloud. Then it splits the text into individual sentences and feeds them to the TTS engine one by one.
Document parsing
PDFs are parsed in-browser using PDF.js with column detection and reading-order reconstruction. DOCX, TXT, PPTX, and images all go through the same clean-text pipeline. Web URLs are extracted and cleaned via the Readability algorithm.
AI text revalidation
For non-PDF documents, Gemini 2.5 Flash reorders any text fragments into correct human reading sequence before playback begins. This fixes cross-column merges and slide layout artifacts so nothing sounds garbled.
Sentence splitting
The cleaned text is split into individual sentences. Every sentence becomes one unit of highlighting, navigation, and TTS synthesis, so skip forward/backward works at the sentence level, not the paragraph or chapter level.
TTS synthesis
Each sentence is sent to the TTS engine appropriate for your plan tier. The engine returns an audio file (WAV or MP3) which plays through an HTMLAudioElement in the browser.
Sentence highlighting
As audio plays, the current sentence lights up in amber. On the Reader tier, highlighting uses SSML timepoints for millisecond-accurate sync. On the Pro tier, one sentence plays while the next is pre-loaded in the background for gapless delivery.
What voices are available?
Recitare offers six voice personas across three accents, with a male and female option for each. All six are available on the Reader and Pro tiers. Voice quality differs by tier. The underlying engine determines how natural and expressive the voice sounds.
- American Male
- American Female
- British Male
- British Female
- Australian Male
- Australian Female
On the Pro tier, each voice persona is mapped to a native Inworld voice model with a persona-specific style instruction. This is what gives Pro voices their warmth and expressiveness compared to generic TTS systems.
What is sentence-by-sentence highlighting?
As Max reads your document, each sentence lights up in amber the moment it begins playing, and the reading area auto-scrolls to keep it visible. When the next sentence starts, the previous one dims. This is the same interaction pattern as a karaoke display. Your eye knows exactly where in the document you are at every moment.
Reader tier: SSML timepoints
Up to 8 sentences are batched into one API call wrapped in SSML markup. Google Cloud returns the MP3 plus a list of timepoints (e.g., sentence 3 starts at 4.217 seconds). The frontend polls the audio clock 60 times per second via requestAnimationFrame and advances the highlight exactly when each timepoint is crossed.
Pro tier: pre-buffer pipeline
Each sentence is synthesized individually for maximum expressiveness. While one sentence plays, the next two are fetched and held in a buffer queue. When the current sentence ends, the next audio begins within milliseconds, no perceptible gap between sentences.
How is this different from a screen reader?
Screen readers are accessibility infrastructure. They read everything on screen: navigation menus, button labels, ARIA attributes, form fields. Recitare's TTS is purpose-built for document content:
| Screen Reader | Recitare TTS | |
|---|---|---|
| What it reads | Everything on screen | Document prose only |
| Removes noise | No | Headers, footers, page numbers, footnotes |
| Column order | DOM order (often wrong) | Spatially reconstructed reading order |
| Navigation | Element-level | Sentence-level skip forward / back |
| Voice quality | OS system voice | Inworld TTS-1.5 (Mini or Max) |
What is the difference between Free, Reader, and Pro?
Three tiers, three TTS engines. The fundamentals, sentence highlighting, skip controls, speed, voice selection, are identical across all tiers. What changes is voice quality, word limits, and the underlying synthesis technology.
| Free | Reader · $5/mo | Pro · $18/mo | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Engine | Inworld TTS-1.5 Mini | Inworld TTS-1.5 Mini | Inworld TTS-1.5 Max |
| Voice quality | High quality, natural | High quality, natural | Highest quality, expressive |
| Word limit | 1,000 / week | 50,000 / month | 500,000 / month |
| Voices | 6 AI voices | 6 AI voices | 6 AI voices + expressive style |
| Highlight sync | Sentence-level | Karaoke (SSML timepoints) | Sentence + 2-ahead pre-buffer |
| Gapless audio | No | Batch (8 sentences) | Yes (pre-buffer) |
What controls are available during playback?
The controls bar stays visible at the top of the reading area at all times. You never need to scroll to reach a playback button.
Play / Pause
Tap to start or pause at any moment. Resumes from the exact sentence where you stopped.
Skip Forward / Backward
Jump one sentence at a time in either direction. Playback restarts instantly from the new position.
Speed control
0.75x, 1x, 1.25x, 1.5x, 1.75x, 2x. Change speed mid-session; takes effect on the next sentence.
Voice selector
Switch between the 6 voice personas at any time. The new voice takes effect on the next sentence.
Free / Basic / Pro toggle
A segmented toggle lets you switch TTS tiers mid-session. Useful for comparing voice quality on a passage.
Stop
Fully stops playback and clears the audio buffer. Useful before switching documents or closing the app.
What technology powers the Pro tier?
The Pro tier runs on Inworld TTS-1.5 Max, released April 2026. It is independently ranked as the highest-quality text-to-speech engine available to developers, ahead of ElevenLabs, OpenAI, and Google WaveNet.
What makes it different from other AI TTS systems is native support for expressive audio tags. The system can embed natural-sounding emotion into speech: a concept explained with [enthusiastic] energy, a caveat delivered in a [thoughtful] tone. This is what makes Max sound like a tutor rather than a text-to-speech robot.
The engine natively supports 14+ languages via the same voice personas. Max will read a French paper in French, a German journal article in German, without any configuration needed.
Who is TTS playback for?
Students with heavy reading loads
Get through assigned readings during your commute or gym session instead of losing evenings to a screen.
Grad students and researchers
Listen to literature review papers while conducting experiments or coding. Stop reading papers, start absorbing them.
Auditory learners
If you retain information better when you hear it rather than see it, TTS is the most natural way to consume written material.
Fast readers who want to go faster
Run TTS at 1.5x or 2x while following the highlighted text. Many users find this faster than reading, with better focus.
People with reading difficulties
Dyslexia, visual fatigue, ADHD: TTS with sentence-by-sentence tracking makes dense text accessible without accessibility compromises.
Non-native language readers
Hearing correct pronunciation while following the highlighted text is one of the best ways to learn academic vocabulary in a second language.
How do you start listening?
Four steps, under 30 seconds:
- Upload a PDF, DOCX, TXT, or PPTX, or paste a URL
- Wait for the document to parse (PDFs process in the browser, usually under 5 seconds)
- Select a voice from the voice picker in the controls bar
- Press play
No configuration. No choosing a reader mode. Just upload and press play. The Free tier starts immediately. Upgrading to Reader or Pro unlocks higher-quality voices and larger monthly word limits from the same interface.
Frequently asked questions
Is TTS playback free?
Yes. The Free tier includes quality AI voices at no cost: a one-time 20,000-word welcome grant when you sign up (enough for a full paper or two), then 1,000 words per week. The Reader plan ($5/month) gives you 50,000 words per month with the same high-quality voices. The Pro plan ($18/month) upgrades you to Inworld TTS-1.5 Max, our highest-quality voice engine, with 500,000 words per month and expressive delivery.
What voices are available?
Six voices across three accents: American male and female, British male and female, and Australian male and female. All six voices are available on every tier, Free, Reader, and Pro, powered by Inworld TTS-1.5 Mini. Pro tier upgrades to Inworld TTS-1.5 Max with expressive delivery.
What is karaoke-style word-by-word highlighting?
As Max reads your document, each sentence lights up in amber as it is spoken, then dims when the next sentence begins. On the Reader tier, this highlighting is synced to the exact millisecond using SSML timepoints embedded in the audio. On the Pro tier, sentences are pre-loaded one at a time with a 2-sentence pre-buffer for gapless delivery.
Can I change the reading speed?
Yes. All tiers support speed control from 0.75x (slow and deliberate) up to 2x (fast scan). The speed selector is always visible in the controls bar. Changing speed mid-playback takes effect on the next sentence.
How does skip forward and backward work?
The skip buttons move one sentence at a time. Skip forward jumps to the next sentence and resumes playback immediately. Skip backward goes to the previous sentence. If you are more than a couple of seconds into the current sentence, it replays from the start of it first.
How is this different from a screen reader?
Screen readers are accessibility tools designed to read any on-screen text including menus, buttons, and UI labels. Recitare's TTS is document-focused: it parses your full document into clean prose, removes headers, footers, page numbers, and figure labels, then reads the actual content. The result sounds like an audiobook, not a robot narrating a web page.
Does it work with all document types?
Yes. TTS works with PDFs (parsed in-browser via PDF.js), DOCX files, TXT, PPTX, images via OCR, and web content pasted as a URL. All formats go through the same sentence-splitting pipeline so highlighting and skip controls work identically regardless of source.
What happens if I close the tab mid-listen?
Your document and reading position are saved. When you return to Recitare, you can reopen the document and resume from approximately where you left off. The exact sentence position is not persisted between sessions, but your document is always there.