Read-Out-Loud -- A voice other than Microsoft Sam?

What Operating System are you running? MS has multiple voices available for their Text to Speech. You make the changes to the voice in the Text to Speech before running the Read Out Loud and it reads in the new voice.

Dragon Naturally Speaking may well be the best out there these days (not free.)

That said, a search for "open source text to speech" will turn up a lot of alternatives, like YakiToMe, which is free, and easy to use. It is not, however, a download.

CoolSpeech has a two week trial that works with a number of voices.

bytecool has the free voice collection for the XP Text to Speech software.

Smooth voice transitions may still be hard to find for free, but this at least will give you some variety.

How big a selection do you want to hear? You might find you someone here who will read it to a file for you, might/might not be for a nominal fee. There's some pros on here that would probably cost a reasonable but not necessarily "nominal" fee.

Have you given a try to this one? Seems interesting for a free version, but I think if you want something smooth, you will need to invest in a higher grade soft.

Hope this helped.

I tried that YakiToMe to see how it is and if it's any better than Adobe Reader, and once I uploaded the text and had it play for me I heard nothing. I must be doing something wrong.

Okay, I figured out why it won't work. It requires a plug in which is used only on Apple computers, and mine is not. Bummer.

If you are still looking I found this one. Have not tried it myself but it sounds like it might be something you could use . .

http://www.cross-plus-a.com/balabolka.htm