Tell the Tale

Your manuscript and your narration belong together.

Narrating a book or story usually means working in two separate worlds, with the manuscript in one application and the recording in another. Once recording begins, the words on the page and the performance start to drift apart. You have to keep track of mistakes, alternate Takes, pickups, timing changes, and everything that happens between the original text and the finished narration.

Tell the Tale is built around a simpler idea: the manuscript already tells us what should be said. Instead of treating the script and the recording as unrelated files, Tell the Tale keeps them connected throughout the production process. You can write or import the manuscript, record directly against it, manage alternate performances, correct mistakes, edit the narration, master the finished audio, and prepare the completed work for publication from one manuscript-centered application.

Tell the Tale is a native Mac application designed specifically for scripted narration. It is not a general-purpose digital audio workstation adapted to audiobook work. The manuscript remains at the center of the Project from the first recording through the finished performance.

Start with the manuscript

Every narration begins with the text, so Tell the Tale begins there as well. You can write directly in Tell the Tale or import an existing manuscript. Imported source material is preserved, while Tell the Tale maintains the working manuscript and its revision history inside the Project.

When you are ready to record, you approve the exact manuscript revision the performance should follow. That approved text becomes the reference for the narration, allowing later recording, alignment, review, and production work to remain connected to the words that were intended to be spoken.

The manuscript is not replaced by a transcription of the recording. Speech recognition and alignment exist to help Tell the Tale understand where the performance corresponds to the known text. The manuscript remains the authority.

Record against the text

The manuscript remains part of the recording environment instead of being pushed into another application or window. Tell the Tale presents the approved text through a built-in teleprompter designed for scripted performance, with manual navigation available whenever you need it and speech following available when you want the text to move with you.

If a passage needs another performance, you can record another Take without replacing the first one. If part of an existing recording needs to be corrected, you can create a pickup while preserving the original audio. Tell the Tale also supports punch-and-roll recording, allowing you to return to an earlier point, hear the lead-in, and continue the performance naturally from there.

Each recording remains associated with the manuscript passage it was created to perform. That relationship gives Tell the Tale more context than an ordinary waveform editor has because the application knows both what was recorded and what the narrator was trying to perform.

Keep every Take

A second performance should not require sacrificing the first one. Tell the Tale treats alternate Takes as part of the narration itself rather than as loose audio files that have to be tracked separately.

You can record another reading of a sentence or passage, listen to the alternatives, and decide which performance belongs in the finished narration. The original source recordings remain intact while your editing decisions determine how the final performance is assembled.

This gives you room to experiment with delivery without turning every decision into a permanent change. A Take you do not use today remains available if you change your mind later, and a pickup does not erase the performance it replaces.

Edit the performance, not the source recordings

Tell the Tale's production tools are built around spoken performance rather than general audio production. You can split and trim recordings, adjust timing, refine pauses, create fades and crossfades, correct gain differences, and assemble the Takes you want into the working performance.

The manuscript stays nearby while you work, so the editing process can remain connected to sentences, passages, Takes, pickups, and performances instead of forcing narration into a track-centered workflow. You can move between recording and production as the work develops, returning to Record when another pickup or alternate Take is needed and then continuing the same performance in Produce.

All normal editing is non-destructive. Tell the Tale changes how the finished performance is assembled without rewriting the original recordings. The source remains available even after the performance has changed substantially.

Know what was supposed to be said

Tell the Tale begins with an advantage that ordinary audio editors do not have: it knows the manuscript. That makes it possible to connect the recorded performance back to the approved text instead of treating speech recognition or transcription as the source of truth.

With the optional Narration Pack, Tell the Tale can use word-level manuscript alignment to connect passages in the manuscript with their corresponding audio. You can select text and move to the recording, move through the recording and see where you are in the manuscript, and review places where the relationship between the words and the performance is uncertain.

That same connection can help identify differences between the approved manuscript and the narration, including potential omissions, substitutions, and repetitions. Instead of listening through an entire recording while following along manually, you have another way to focus attention on places that may need review.

The manuscript remains authoritative throughout the process. Tell the Tale uses speech analysis to help locate and review the performance, not to rewrite the text based on what it thinks it heard.

Make separate recordings sound like one performance

Pickups and alternate Takes may be recorded minutes, hours, or days apart, and small changes in microphone position, speaking level, room sound, or performance can make an otherwise clean edit noticeable. Those differences can become especially obvious when two recordings are placed directly beside one another.

The optional Narration Pack adds production intelligence designed specifically for that problem. Tell the Tale can analyze adjoining recordings for differences in loudness, tone, background character, and other characteristics that can make an edit stand out.

Sound Profiles provide a broader reference for the sound of a production, while Clip and Performance Conform help address local differences between Takes, pickups, and recording sessions. The intent is to make separately recorded material belong together without forcing every passage into exactly the same sound or level.

The goal is not to flatten the performance or remove intentional variation. A whisper should still sound like a whisper, and a louder emotional passage should still have the dynamics that made the performance work. Tell the Tale is designed to identify technical inconsistencies while leaving artistic decisions with the person producing the narration.

Finish the narration

A finished narration is more than a collection of edited Takes. Before the performance is complete, the audio still needs to be reviewed as a whole, cleaned where necessary, brought into a consistent production, mastered, and approved.

Tell the Tale keeps that work inside the same Performance rather than asking you to render intermediate files and continue somewhere else. Cleanup, conforming, mastering, and final quality review all lead toward one approved master that represents the completed performance.

The finished master is tied to the exact manuscript and production state that created it. Tell the Tale retains the relationship between the source recordings, the editing decisions, the approved manuscript, and the resulting master so the finished file does not become disconnected from the work behind it.

Tell the Tale 1.0 exports that approved master directly to a location you choose. Export does not rerender the performance into a new creative state or replace the copy retained by the Project. The exported file is the deliverable, while the Tell the Tale Project remains the authoritative source containing the manuscript, recordings, production decisions, and history behind it.

Podcast publishing

Coming in Tell the Tale 1.1

Tell the Tale's Publish workflow will expand in version 1.1 with dedicated Podcast publishing. The goal is to take the approved narration master and prepare it for a specific publication destination without reopening decisions that were already settled during recording and production.

Podcast publishing will begin with the completed master. Tell the Tale will resolve the publication metadata and settings required by the supported Podcast profile, create the required encoded output, assemble the finished deliverable, and validate it before the build is treated as complete.

The publishing process will also retain enough information to know what produced a particular build. If the approved source or relevant settings change later, Tell the Tale can identify that the previous export no longer represents the current state. If nothing has changed, the application can recognize that the same version has already been built while still allowing you to create it again deliberately.

Podcast output remains separate from the Project's creative authority. Exporting, moving, or deleting the external copy does not change the approved manuscript or narration master inside Tell the Tale.

Audiobook publishing

Coming in Tell the Tale 1.2

Audiobook publishing will build on the same completed narration workflow in Tell the Tale 1.2. The recording and production work will still be completed before publication begins, so preparing an audiobook does not become another round of Take selection, editing, or mastering.

Tell the Tale will use the approved master together with the publication information required by the supported Audiobook profile. It will prepare the necessary encoded audio, organize the output according to the required file and chapter structure, apply the appropriate metadata, and validate the finished deliverable before export.

The Audiobook build will remain connected to the exact approved source and profile that produced it. Tell the Tale can retain the build history and identify whether a later attempt uses the same inputs or whether something material has changed since the previous export.

The manuscript, original recordings, working Performance, and approved master remain preserved inside the Project throughout that process. Audiobook publishing creates a destination-specific deliverable from the finished work rather than turning that deliverable into the new source of truth.

Your work stays yours

A manuscript or recording session may represent months or years of work, and some of that work cannot be recreated. A lost manuscript revision can sometimes be rewritten, but a particular reading, performance, or recording session may be gone for good. Tell the Tale is designed around preserving those materials before convenience or automation.

Original recordings are not overwritten by normal editing. Committed manuscript history is preserved. Editing decisions remain separate from the source audio they reference. Finished masters are retained as approved artifacts rather than treated as disposable temporary renders.

Tell the Tale also includes multiple layers of recovery. Automatic local backups protect important Project state during normal work, while complete Project backups can preserve the manuscript, recordings, production state, and other authoritative media together. If a recording session is interrupted unexpectedly, Tell the Tale attempts to recover usable staged audio instead of simply discarding anything that was not cleanly finalized.

Project upgrades are handled with the same concern for preservation. Tell the Tale Projects contain their own format version, allowing the application to recognize an older Project before opening it. When a Project needs to be migrated forward, the migration process can preserve recovery checkpoints along the way so the previous state is still available if a defect is discovered later.

When something goes wrong, the priority is to preserve the last valid work rather than pretend an operation succeeded.

Built for Mac

Tell the Tale is a native macOS application designed for Apple Silicon. It is built around the Mac rather than beginning as a cross-platform application and reducing the desktop experience to whatever can be shared with another operating system.

Where practical, manuscript analysis, recording, processing, and other work remain on your Mac. That local-first approach is especially valuable when you are working with an unpublished manuscript or recordings that have not yet been released.

The interface is also designed around the needs of someone who may spend long recording and editing sessions inside the application. Technical audio controls should appear when they help with the narration rather than because an audio engine happens to expose them. Tell the Tale favors manuscript-centered concepts such as passages, Takes, pickups, and performances over unnecessary studio terminology.

Accessibility is part of the same design. Tell the Tale is intended to support keyboard operation throughout the core workflow, provide useful VoiceOver information, scale the manuscript and teleprompter for low-vision use, and avoid making important information dependent on color or waveform interpretation alone.

Included with Tell the Tale

Tell the Tale includes the complete manual workflow required to take a manuscript through recording, production, mastering, and finished-master export. You do not need an additional purchase simply to record a manuscript and complete a finished narration.

The included application covers manuscript creation and import, revision history, manuscript approval, high-quality recording, the narration teleprompter, speech following, multiple Takes, pickups, punch-and-roll, playback, waveform editing, Take selection and comping, timing adjustments, fades, gain control, narration cleanup, mastering, Performance review, Project backup and recovery, and finished-master export.

That included workflow is intended to stand on its own as a complete product. Optional purchases add deeper analysis and production assistance for users who want Tell the Tale to take on more of the detailed review and consistency work.

Narration Pack

$99.99

The Narration Pack expands Tell the Tale's understanding of the relationship between the manuscript and the recorded performance. It adds word-level manuscript timing, linked manuscript and audio navigation, alignment review, mismatch detection, narration proofing, and additional assistance when comparing and assembling Takes.

It also adds more advanced production intelligence. Clip and Performance Conform help address differences between adjoining Takes, pickups, and sessions, while Sound Profiles provide a broader reference for the sound of the production. Advanced cleanup and mastering assistance can help identify and correct technical inconsistencies without replacing the user's judgment about how the performance should sound.

The Narration Pack is a permanent purchase.

Tell the Tale Pro

$199.99

Tell the Tale Pro includes every paid capability available in the Tell the Tale 1.x branch. In the current V1 product, that includes the complete Narration Pack together with the paid capabilities added as the 1.x branch expands.

Pro is intended for users who know they want the complete Tell the Tale application rather than purchasing individual capability packages separately.

Tell the Tale Pro is a permanent purchase.

Tell the Tale is currently in closed beta

Tell the Tale is under active development and is currently being tested through a closed beta program. The beta is being used to validate the complete narration workflow, including manuscript handling, recording, Takes, pickups, editing, mastering, recovery, accessibility, and the behavior of real Projects over longer production sessions.

The closed beta is not currently accepting additional testers. We would rather keep the test group small enough that feedback can be evaluated carefully than continually expand access during development.

If you are interested in Tell the Tale, you can ask to be notified when the application becomes publicly available. We will use that notification list for launch information rather than treating it as an application for the current beta.

Notify Me When Tell the Tale Launches

Tell the Tale is being built for people who start with words on a page and need to turn those words into a finished performance without losing the connection between the two. If that is how you work, we would like to let you know when it is ready.