Ok. So i've been using the ios and mac os betas for a bit now, and I'm loving the elequence voices. However, the voices seem to click or clip, on seemingly random intervals. Am I the only experiencing this? I already sent the feedback to apple about this, i'll paste the description about the report I sent and the steps to reproduce this. This is happening in both mac and ios. Has anyone else reported this as well?
When using any of the elequense voices as the voiceover voice, there seem to be sirtain words or bits where the voice clicks. Steps to reproduce, 1. Turn on voiceover by asking siri to turn on voiceover or by going into settings, accessibility, voiceover. 2. Change the voiceover voice to any of the elequense voices by going into settings, accessibility, voiceover, speech, and select any voice from elequense, i'm using reed myself. 3. Turn off voiceover sounds by going to settings, accessibility, voiceover, audio, sounds and hacticks and disable the voiceover sounds. This is optional, however it might help to hear the clicks clearer. 4. Use the elequense voice as you normally would use any other voiceover voice. You'll notice the voice clicks at sirtain times. The expected behavior is that the voice shouldn't click or have any noises, which isn't what's happening. I'll attach a screen recording where the voice clipped, clicked for me about twice. As an other note: this clicking is present in mac os as well with the elequense voices. The issue might be that elequense voices might need to be higher quality than they are currently.
I did attach a short screen recording where the voice clipped, once when it said wi-fi and another time when it said igna's iphone, and the battery charge, with sounds turned off.
Has anyone found a solution? I mean this is a miner bug as far as it goes, but it is a bit annoying nonetheless. Also, if others besides myself could report this behavier to apple, that'd be great. I'm on a iphone 12 by the way, and a macbook mid 2018.
Also, I can post the screen recording displaying the behavior mentioned above, the same one I attached to the report I sent, however if you've had elequence for enough time you probably already noticed this.
By Igna Triay, 13 July, 2022
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Comments
Higher quality won't fix it
Even if they make the voices higher quality, Eliquence has always clipped, or so I remember from my JFW days. This is one of the main reasons i will not be using them when the releases are out. It's a 30 year old, out dated technology Apple purchased to support their next languages which as of now aren't supported at all. this was bound to happen. As I see it, for clarification I could be wrong, once the support for the upcoming languages is added, how are they going to increase a voice's pronunciation, or increase its/ quality? In all avenues, I am not sure they can. wish all luck on reporting this and other bugs like them, but I don't see anything but problems going down the road.
Reported, Hoping for a fix
The distortions we are hearing are way more than what we sometimes hear in Eloquence with Jaws or NVDA. It also stutters sometimes while reading a large content with say all command.
I have also experienced this
I am also experiencing this and have reported it along with a screen recording. This is not typical of eloquence either on JFW or NVDA so hoping there's a fix for it.
I noticed it
I think there's some funkiness going on with phoneme formation in the beta. Samantha's pronunciation has been strange ever since installing it. Last night I reported an issue where Samantha straight up wouldn't read the word "reply". She's also been slightly bungling the pronunciation of words she didn't used to mispronounce.
I briefly tried eloquence and noticed the popping sounds. When I switched back to Samantha, it also started doing it until I restarted Voiceover. It's like the speech samples aren't quite lining up and there's disparity in the phase of the waveform. Like if you play a sound on your speakers that doesn't fade out and instead will just pop or click as the speaker cone rapidly moves back to its neutral position when the sound suddenly ends.
odd
It might not be a specific eloquence problem then, if other voices are doing it too. To the person who said that elequence clips on jfw and nvda... not the case. I've never noticed elequence clip on jaws or nvda. Maybee in the earlier days, but I didn't have a computer back then. Now however, it doesn't happen.
To that extent though, should I write another report informing that the clipping happens with other voices? I just noticed it with alex on my applewatch.
elequence not speaking emojis?
Has anyone else noticed that elequense doesn't speaa emojis? I mean, when browsing through emojis, voiceover reads out the number of the emoji but doesn't say what it is if using elequence. If I got back to using alex, the emoji gets read out.
I was going to say that
Good point!
Emojis
Quite a few other voices are also not reporting emojis, fully or partially. Ava appears doing better in this area as for now :)
Clicking sounds
TO clarify a bit since it seems like people are getting confused, there are two different clicking sounds Eloquence can make on iOS:
The first one, as people rightly pointed out, happens with Jaws / NVDA as well. This one however happens only on somewhat higher speech rates, and if you notice it, you will be able to reproduce it with exact same pieces of texts all the time. In NVDA; newer addons have made some progress in fixing this, but that's besides the point for this particular post.
That clipping problem isn't something I expect Apple to address. If they do, it will surely be nice, but it is something you get used to over the years. I was also told that decreasing the speech volume helps mitigate this further.
The second one however I fully expect Apple to fix, because it happens only on iOS. There is a chopping sound, for me it seems to happen much more often when Eloquence starts reading something, though it happens in the middle of longer texts as well sometimes. It is harder to reproduce and less consistent, but it's definitely there. Just like someone else said though, I notice it with Alex too but less prominent, so it is definitely an iOS 16 regression.
For me too
I get this problem with Alex, Samantha, and eloquence voices lowering the volume does not seem to help although it only occurs on my build in speakers, I have reported this to Apple.
Eloquence sounds fine to me, but there is an issue with speed.
Hello,
Using Eloquence on both Mac and iPhone, and have had none of the problems described. Using iPhone 11 Pro and m1 MacBook Air. However, the problem I have noticed is with the speed. I don't run my voices crazy fast like a lot of people. The average person might not understand it, but it is nowhere near as fast as I have heard before. However, the issue I have had is that there is a major jump between 50 and 60 percent. So, 50% sounds down right slow, and 60 is way to fast. It seems to me like instead of just jumping 10 percentage points, it jumps 20 or 30. Maybe it's just me, and I was able to find a way to get it at like 53 or so, but some fine tuning could still be in order. I already reported it. Anyone else had this issue?
yeah
I noticed this as well.
Same here
Hello. After downloading the IOS 16 beta on my 11 Pro Max, I am having the same issue. This has been reported via the feedback app.
having same issue.
I also reported. Not holding my breath. Since it's the first public beta, I give them a little slack. If they can't fix this bug, I'd rather they remove eloquence completely. I'd rather have no eloquence at all than this mess.
Speak for yourself
Why do people want features removed for everyone just because they are not happy with them?
It is quite simple, you want Eloquence gone? You can already achieve that, just don't ever use it since it is not forced on you. For me personally, despite all these bugs, it is something we never expected, and yet it's here, and I am actually quite happy with it and sure that it will eventually be just as stable as any other voice.
Don't kid yourselves, they ported a voice which is almost 30 years old to new technologies just for us. It takes work, especially since Apple is probably not familiar with it at all.
My thoughts on Eloquence on iOS
I love Eloquence on iOS. I cannot test it on Ventura, as my mac is an early 2015 modal and is too old. Anyway, there are bugs with it on iOS but remember Eloquence for Android? That had bugs. The pitch was low, it was muffled, but Code Factory fixt the bugs. Now to the people who created APK files. These were shared and Eloquence was not purchased by lots of blind people, when it should’ve been. Now Code Factory pulled it, with know chance of it’s return. Now to those who don’t want eloquence on iOS. Voices are subjective, but just because someone doesn’t like a particular voice, Eloquence in this case, doesn’t mean everyone doesn’t. Eloquence is optional, and it’s amazing Apple abliged us! I recall threads on AppleVis, from 2015 and some newer, written by people who really wanted Eloquence. Now, it’s finally here! The majority seem to want it, so why let the minority dictate what is in Apple platforms? I, for one, appreciate Apple, for giving us a framilier sinthasizer to most, and to those who want Apple to remove it, I say, you will never get your wish, and I am greatful for it. Apple acquired the nessessary licenses to offer eloquence on it’s platforms, don’t make Apple throw it all away!
agree with nicola
No one is holding a gun to your head and saying, use elequense. A lot of people, including myself, are loving it. I mean yeah it has some bugs but, again, first beta. Also, you do realize that this bug isn't just on the elequence side of things right? Other voices, such as alex etc, have had a bit of a regression or something and are making the same clicking noise elequence does at the moment.
Third developer beta, kind of
For developers, this beta is an updated build, not a full revision of iOS. It is the first public beta. Just wanted to point that out. I am probably one of the few who uses the developer program membership just for betas. I’d like to learn to develop apps someday. Anyway, to bring this back on topic, a lot of us love Eloquence. My comments on the matter have been read by you all. I still hold that view. The sample rate, is not the same as Windows, and Android. ‘M sure Apple will fix that! One way to increase bug reports by VoiceOver users, is to add eloquence to all the platforms. This is a boom for accessibility, as more bug reports will get filed. Thanks Apple for bridging the gap for VoiceOver users. One time, on the phone with Apple accessibility, I got a shocking statistic. Of VoiceOver users, five percent are beta testers. Now that’s obviously increased now, and I beleave Eloquence is the reason. Good job Apple, and long live eloquence!
the clipping and clickign…
the clipping and clickign is normal and her's why. If you hav ethe newest iPad air wiht the m chip the crackling is not as present as the processer is much better. It clicks and crackles a bit on my iPhone 10 r but I can live with it. I just filed another few bugs this weekend so we'll see what happens.
Eloquence and the second public beta
I'm running the beta on my 2020 iPad Pro, and the clipping and clicking has gotten better in the second public beta release.