Kindle Audio Adapter

It took me 2 tries because the first adapter I received didn't work, but the second works great! I'm still learning the quirks of using it but it does exactly what I was looking for, which is to replace my old kindle touch that I kept around for the TTS. I have a kindle voyage and sometimes I just need to keep reading a book on my way home, now I can listen while driving. Thanks, Amazon!

Not working past kindle recognizing it. Wasted time and money on this. Instructions worthless as never got to the receiving audio instruction step. Went online no help. Went to other buyers and the 2 finger trick no good. Very sad unable to listen to books on oasis, other than paying for audio books that does work with my Bluetooth. Can listen on my HD kindle, but gee who wants to carry 2? Heavy reader and eye strain on HD, read a book per day. Does not deserve 1 star.

Everything as expected. I was very disappointed when I received my new Kindle to find that it had no auxiliary port and the text to speech feature was gone. I listen to my books in the car, so I had to find a way to get around it. This adapter is the answer and it works fine. An auxiliary cable plugs into one end of the adapter and then the adapter plugs in to the miniUSB on the Kindle. Once plugged in, the Kindle automatically goes into VoiceView mode where it will read to me. VoiceView navigation is kind of a pain, so I get my book open to the page I'm on first, then plug the adapter in so there's no additional navigating to do.

Caution: if you are getting this for the new Kindle oasis, the weak magnetic connection between the cover and reader proper will stop the audio. This device will not work as of Aug 2016 without the Kindle cover.. Good luck trying to hold the oasis, the charging cover and the audio adapter together as not to allow the magnets from disengaging.

I bought the Kindle Paperwhite with the Audio Adapter to replace Kindle Touches that I currently own. I was hoping that this would be wonderful as I would have both the lights for reading in low-light settings and the text-to-speech capability for when I was driving in the car. First off, there were no direction on how to use the adaptor except for how to plug it in. Once you have it plugged in and the Kindle turned on, it will give some directions-but not many. To say that it didn't have enough information is a huge understatement. However, the real test came while I was driving in the car.

After playing with the adaptor on the Kindle Paperwhite for a couple of weeks, I felt comfortable trying it out in the car while driving. To my surprise and dissatisfaction, I found that the sound was so low–even using headphones which allowed me to adjust the volume, that I could barely hear anything. I turned the headphone volume up as high as it went, had all the windows closed, and turned off the radio. Listening in those conditions, just the sound of the vehicle itself–which is fairly quiet–I could barely hear the book I was trying to listen to. I would miss a couple of words in each sentence and finally gave up because I wanted to enjoy the whole book without worrying about missing important pieces of information to the story.

Just to be sure that there wasn't a problem with the headphones, I used the same headphones with my Kindle Touches–and it worked fine. I could hear everything quite well. In fact, I usually listen to music in the background while at the same time listening to the Kindle book. And I didn't need to turn the volume all the way up when I used my Kindle Touch which comes with the text-to-speech capability.

I would also like to say that in addition to not providing information on how to use the adaptors when it is sent out, the customer service representatives from Amazon's Kindle department had no clue how to use the adaptor with the Paperwhite. I know because I called twice. The first representative I talked to didn't seem to understand the questions that I needed answered and the second representative simply didn't know (and couldn't find) the answers to my questions. As it turns out, one of my questions was how to start the text-to-speech function (which requires you to brush two fingers downward on your Kindle). I figured that out while I was on hold. I STILL haven't figured out how to pause the text-to-speech and then have it resume from the same place.

I was really disappointed when they discontinued putting text-to-speech capability on the e-ink Kindles and had hoped that this adaptor would be a great way to get the best of both worlds. It's not. At least not yet. I still believe they could do a great job, but there needs to be more information on how to use the adaptor, there is (so far as I can tell) absolutely no volume control, and the setting currently is completely inadequate, plus the customer service staff needs to be taught about the product!

Sure the Kindle itself is a technological embarrassment with an operating design rooted firmly back in the 1980’s and a huge profit margin for something that actually does almost nothing. There are a hundred ways it could be updated to be more useful, more intuitive and more worth the price. So the disappointment so many have shared about the archaic steps the user has to plod through just to get this adapter to play the audio track isn’t just someone blowing off steam, their concerns are real and valid. So enough said about the hoops you have to go through getting this thing to work, I was able to manage it in about a half hour,after it’s all set up how does it perform?

The answer is that you have to be realistic. This is not the same as an audio book in which a professional voice reads a book with all kinds of emotions and tonal inflections and sometimes even music or sound effects. No, this is a robotic computerized conversation of text to a synthesized voice. There is little emotion or tonal inflection of the fixed volume female voice other than a slight change in timbre at a question mark or exclamation point, some words will be badly mispronounced with the accents on the wrong syllables. It is more an aid to the vision impaired than a pleasant relaxing entertainment experience. But its not only for those with vision loss. It can be useful for listening to the content of aa book while driving, or maybe while learning to do a project while your hands are busy. There are a few very important things to know and to me the one that tops the list is text to speech works best for continuous dialogue, it completely falls apart when it reaches any kind of graphic, chart, diagram, etc. So textbooks, instruction manual books and printed materials of that sort can be very frustrating to try to convert to speech.

For what it is the twenty buck price is off the charts, it’s not worth anywhere near that. I bought mine from Amazon’ warehouse, essentially brand new, for about four bucks. That’s about four times what it’s worth but I do feel I’ll get some value out of it and despite this not sounding very positive guess what, I’m glad I bought it.

By the way, while it is designed to be used with earphones it actually can be plugged in to some car stereos or amplified loudspeakers using optional cables, which can be very useful.

My rating for this is based on the value of what it does, which is good. I took a little away because at normal selling price it’s not worth it. I can’t speak to compatibility with all of the dozens of variations of Kindle models, apparently it works with some and not with others which makes no sense at all. If you search the Kindle help pages there is a list of exactly which models it fits.

The only way you can know for sure is to try it with your own reader.

Very difficult user interface. At 11 months of light use and careful handling, it quit working.

No hassle - works out of the box as advertised. Used it on a Kindle Oasis and the screen reader worked perfectly. Hook it to a headphone or plug into a BOSE portable speaker to have text-to-speech reading on enabled books. It also reads the screen controls to you, so not strictly for TTS (but that is the Oasis not the Adapter). This also uses the MICRO USB connector suitable for Kindle. Many other USB to Audio adapters use the MINI or STD USB.

Great to have a Kindle that reads to you my poor 2007 Kindle died so had to get a new one the 2007 Kindle is a little easier to use on speech mode this one is fine but you only have the choice of a female voice I prefer a male voice reading back to me I have quite a lot of sight left so find it not too hard to use I would think that if you have no sight at all it could be a bit of a problem the adaptor only works with the new Paperwhite and I don't think it is sold separately but very happy with my new Kindle and the fact that it has a backlight so if I decide to read it it is easier to read in bed light

Fantastic