eloquence in iOS 16.5 beta 2 and Mac OS 13.4 beta 2

By Levi Gobin, 12 April, 2023

Forum
Apple Beta Releases

hi.
has anyone heard how eloquence pronounces things with a weird intonation? it happens when reading phone numbers or emojis on iOS. It happens a lot more on Mac. it almost sounds like it is putting an ellipsis or a question mark at the end of its fraises. for example, if eloquence read the numbers 1 2 3 4 5, eloquence used to sound sort of like this. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. now, it almost sounds like this, 1? 2? 3? 4? 5?
Let me know if you have seen this. I will report it to apple as well. I don't know if I like it or not but tell me your thoughts.
I also noticed that I had my speech rate set to a certain percentage and that percentage was slower after I updated but the value didn't change. For example, I always had to keep eloquence at 60 on the iPhone. I now have to keep it at 70 to get basically the same thing.
Other than that, eloquence sounds just a tad bit clearer, which is nice, but not if eloquence keeps putting a question mark after every number or after every silible on the Mac.
Just to show you how annoying it can be, when I return to my desk top on the Mac, it almost sounds like this.
Finder? desktop? music? folder.
it almost sounds like eloquence is questioning everything.
I have heard a similar thing when using espeak, but I just thought that was just because espeak is a 3rd party synth.
let me know if you have experienced anything similar on any other voices, because it's kinda annoying.
thanks for reading.
P.S., I feel like with every iOS 16 update, there's always a problem with eloquence in one way or another. I'm hoping iOS 17 is much better. only time will tell.

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Comments

By Siobhan on Tuesday, April 25, 2023 - 05:15

Hi. i don't have Eliquence installed, as I think after way back in jfw 3.2 it changed. Anyway I have vague memories of it sounding like that and people used to do stupid things like put a ton of Rs' in their stuff so JFW would growl, I may or may not have done it no admission from me. Seriously though, even though I'm using Alex, I'm guessing the third party idea you came up with might have some merit. I applaud Apple on supporting more languages, have a huge issue with them outsourcing 40 technology to do what they can't or don't want to develop but that's another story. Hope you get your answers. I wish they'd work internally on their software much more. Good luck. Just to make you feel a bit better, I wish Alex wouldn't sound like he's hungover or i just woke him up sometimes in edit fields. :)

By mcox on Tuesday, April 25, 2023 - 05:15

Fix it, Apple! and then leave it, Seriously!

By wiljames on Tuesday, April 25, 2023 - 05:15

It's still 11KHZ. At least it's not 8KHZ!

By roman on Tuesday, April 25, 2023 - 05:15

Hi people. I use Alex so I am not aware of the issue.

By Dherion on Tuesday, April 25, 2023 - 05:15

I will never understand why Apple makes these strange settings to synthesizers, when they are not necessary and most of the time incredibly annoying.
I have a feeling there's a gentleman somewhere who doesn't use VoiceOver who says.... "This idea is brutal". He implements it because to his ears it sounds good, but it turns out that since it hasn't been tested by people who actually use VoiceOver, all it does is hurt the user experience.

By Daniel Angus M… on Tuesday, April 25, 2023 - 05:15

the quolity of eloquence in iOS 16.5 beta 2 is a lot tinnier. it seems like a nonoptimized version like the old BrailleNote Empire. it speaks numbers differently, and it is a lot werse than beta 1.

By Levi Gobin on Tuesday, April 25, 2023 - 05:15

I honestly don’t know what could be causing this. I have tried other voices, but I keep coming back to eloquence because it does not use hardly any memory resources compared to Alex, which itself is a little less than a gigabyte. Lightweight voices such as eloquence are 1, very easy to understand and two, able to be understood at high speed with hardly any lag.
iOS 17 betas are what feels like an eternity away, but in truth they are 52 days away as of me writing this now.
All we can do now is wait.
Then after that, all we can do then is just wait some more.
After we wait even more, all we can do is wait an even longer time.
It’s up to us to play the waiting game, and for Apple to deliver the bug fixes and voiceover fixes we need, and to stop changing everything about voiceover when it works perfectly fine.

By JC on Tuesday, April 25, 2023 - 05:15

I understand the quality of the voice. sure, it's got its bugs, but I'm sure it'll be sorted out. So long as folks continue to report feedback to Apple. They're keeping the sample rate to 11 kHz to save up on resources.

By Bingo Little on Tuesday, April 25, 2023 - 05:15

I actually liked Eloquence on the MPower. I do understand the typo - it did seem like somewhat of an empire back in the day. Only problem with the dear old MPower was you were stuck with american English Eloquence. Mind you, braille translation on that thing was superb. Maybe IOS17 will have Keynote Gold? Orpheus? The dear old Mimmic? I just hope the bleeder doesn't crash all the time!

By Chris on Tuesday, April 25, 2023 - 05:15

Eloquence isn't resource intensive, and these devices are relatively powerful now. I don't buy that.

By Sebby on Tuesday, April 25, 2023 - 05:15

It is a fuller sound, and my ears aren't what they used to be. But, yeah, Eloquence is hard to beat on clarity, if not diction. Unfortunately if this is what we're in for then I'm going to have to go back to Alex, or Ralph. The other problem is the speed difference between Eloquence and the other synthesisers, so changing even temporarily to another TTS is a big effort of putting the speeds right, then clobbering the pronunciation dictionary to make everything sound all right. If you're testing, please tell Apple. I know eloquence isn't for everyone, but for those who use it, seems pretty clear why.

By Henrik on Tuesday, April 25, 2023 - 05:15

I just think it's very unfortunate that we'll most likely never see the 16 khz version of eloquence on iOS. As for resources, I really don't think that's the problem. All the other voices are 22 khz, and they are huge. Eloquence is tiny in compareson. I could be wrong, but they way I see it leaves us with two possibilities. 1, they don't feel like enabling it, or 2, they don't have the latest version of the code that has it. If the first possibility is the case, then I just wish they would at least give users the option to choose which one to use like on android.