I am using an Apple Watch Series 8 and am running the latest Watch OS 11.1. Since upgradeing the operating system, I have found that whatever Voiceover voice I use, it sometimes randomly becomes distorted and at other times, it speaks fine. Wondering if anyone has come across this and if there is a solution? I have tried switching Voiceover on and off, as well as muting and unmuting it, often to no avail. I have tried changing voices, altering volume and the like and the problem is often still there. At other times, the voice speaks just fine, as expected. Does anyone have any ideas please?
Comments
It could be a physical issue…
It could be a physical issue with something on the speaker vibrating, either that or the speaker is damaged, though that's unlikely.
I suggest cleaning the speaker grill using something like bluetack. Don't scrape around in there with anything , instead use bluetack, or similar, which will lift out any ick on the speaker.
See if this setting is on
Go under voiceover settings on the watch and choose speech. Now look for the option that says improve speech quality. If on toggle to off. I got the watch 10 and this was driving me nuts for days. Basically they are using the microphone to tell if your in a louder environment and will boost the voice. Only problem with this is quality really suffers.
This has ocasionally…
This has ocasionally happened to me when the watch was in low power mode, I'm not sure if les resources are being allocated to VoiceOver or something else is at the root of it. Outside low power mode though, mine is generally snappy
Joe's Solution Worked
Hi. Thanks to Joe's above comment, I managed to solve my issue, by turning Improve Speech Quality off. Many thanks
Yes, I tried turning it on…
Yes, I tried turning it on. It's aweful! It does something weird to the voice, cutting out all base, and dropping the sample rate. It also passes on into headphones if you've got them connected to the apple watch.
A nice idea, maybe, but a very half baked realisation.