Let Logos 4 Read the Bible to You

Today’s guest post is from David Lemmons, one of the wonderful contributors on the Logos Forums.

I am a relatively new user of Logos. I have upgraded to version 4 and I have been learning more about it daily—there is still so much more to learn. I subscribe to RSS feeds of the Logos forums and learn new things about how to use the program just about every day.

One of the ways I use the software each day is in my daily Bible reading. I have a rather ambitious reading plan which leads me to read the Old Testament every 90 days and the New Testament every thirty days. This means I read the entire Bible four times each year and the New Testament an additional eight times.

My old system of getting this reading done was to open Logos to my preferred Bible and enlarge the text to the largest setting possible . In order to do my reading more quickly (and I think also to help retention), I use audio files to read as I scroll. I began with a set of MP3 audio files containing the narration of Eric Martin which I purchased for about $20. I adjusted the tempo of these 1189 individual files (one for each Bible chapter) by using the software Audacity. Adjusting the tempo did not result in the chipmunk-sound, rather, the words were easily understood, but were coming twice as fast as the pre-adjusted files. This project took quite a long time and was arduous, but I knew that once I got them prepared I would use them daily, so I did it. Reading the files at this faster pace requires one to concentrate more on the text and I think this is a useful serendipity.

A couple of weeks ago I learned that the very same thing that I had spent several hours of my precious time working on had already been provided by Logos 4.

I am using Windows Vista. All I needed to do was go to Control Panel and open up “Text to Speech.” I selected the voice that sounded best to me: “Microsoft Anna.” I set the “Voice Speed Slider Scale” to two notches slower than the very fastest setting. Then I opened up Logos4 to my Home Page. My two reading plans are on the home page. I click on the day’s reading. I hit the keys, and Anna reads to me at accelerated speed until I stop her by hitting once again . The scrolling is done automatically by Logos.

My reading for today was 1 Chronicles 23–29 and John 7–11. I read this in 26:30 minutes. With Logos 4, and its wonderfully adaptable reading plans, ability to read to me at whatever speed I choose, to scroll automatically through the Bible text, being a more disciplined daily Bible reader is so much easier and so much more fun—I love it!