General TTS Discussion Thread

have they added rh voice for English?

Just now reading this post. Is RH Voice on there? I didn't know. ama check it out.

Update:
I don't see English as an option when in the app.

I just checked out rh Voice, and there is still no English version
That’s not the worst though. Look what the developer wrote back to a two star review where someone was wishing for the English version to be provided.
There are so many English voices already available on iOS. Please read the description of our language strategy. Also, with two-star reviews like yours, this App will not attract English language users in future.
Basically you’re saying, oh, there’s a million other voices on iOS. Just use those? That’s kind of BS in my opinion.
I think just how sided people can use any font they want, we should be able to use any Voice we want. Rant over.

That’s all I’m gonna say, how absolutely disrespectful

That’s just rude

I'll never wrap my head around this whole voice thing. every IOS release, someone wants this voice, someone doesn't want that voice, can this voice be added? In my humble opinion, apple's given up on any voice development whatsoever simply because they can outsource to get voices. Now for languages that needed support as they didn't have any, I can't think of an example off the top of my head, I understand that. But they source technology that hasn't been updated in ages, have low sample rates causing Eliquence to sound tinny as someone has posted before. Personally I wish apple would really develop Alex a little more, maybe a female counterpart, and give us the ability to take what we don't want for voices off our phones and Macs. For example all the novelty voices which are stupid and incredibly unhelpful, I'd get those off faster then a prom dress. I get everyone wants their own voices like the font someone just posted. apple's probably not gonna allow that as they are sandboxed pretty well and the only way is jailbreaking your device which though not a goody goody, I'd be most unwilling to do. Here's to the next OS and maybe deleting the unwanted voices. Notice I didn't say languages because I wouldn't ever think like that.

Make it clear it is because of their response.

We all should be leaving once Starr reviews. That’s right I forgot espeak supported those languages. Let them know that. Let them know that they are not the only one, in Espeak was first.

That is very true.

I'm one of the people who like using voices at slightly different pitches on iOS, and I don't like the fact that when you change the pitch of one thing, everything goes along with it. It would be great if you had the ability to change pitch on a per voice basis

Pronunciations have completely stopped working for me ever since iOS 16 came out. Yes, I have tried restarting my phone, and yes, I have tried setting all the pronunciations to only the voice I use. Nothing has worked. The problem persists on my iPad as well.

Although the premium version of this Voice has been on Mac os for over a year now, it is finally back on the iPhone

Who else sees the default Australian female voice here and who else uses it

For me, I use Eloquence Grandma.

Why that particular Voice?
To me that Voice sounds awful. That is my personal opinion though.

I remember back in the days I used JAWS, some of the voices had overtones or some kind of conflict with the cheap laptop speakers that became annoying after a few minutes. A few attempted to be realistic, but never quite got there, becoming annoying. I think it was Reed and this high-pitched, child's, cartoon voice called Bobby that I eventually used the most. Neither sounded real, and neither were well understood by sighted people... probably because I had the rate cranked up most of the way.
I am lucky that I don't have any auditory issues with the stock Samantha voice, but I completely understand someone needing to find a voice that doesn't make their brain go haywire. Even if it's Grandma.

As of iOS 17 beta 3, I'm back on Red..

I really do not have no hopes what so ever regarding any voices, even if we complain. In my personal view, only the American voices are prioritise and been changed, well, sort of.

I mention the American voices, because other voices of English are just trash. Specifically, Daniel, from the UK,, Kate and Oliver. voices. The UK voices are sentimental to me, because I am from England and we are the English, and the world speaks our language.

My point is, apple has given up on voices and if there is really some legendary voice in the market, then Apple will consider the text to speech revelation.

Hi all. I agree about the thing that the behavior of RHVoice for iOS developers is bad. RHVoice have the best Russian voices on the market imho, also keeping in mind that they are free and open source. They also have great voices for Ukrainian and Polish. For those people who speak Ukrainian the solution provided by Nuance is simply horrible, it makes pronunciation mistakes here and there! So RHVoice for different languages is really needed!

Hi all. Yes it would be cool to download preferred voices from the app store in the same way an app is downloaded. As for RH voice, there is still no English option. Happy Zoey premium is coming to iOs 17.

Eloquence Reid all the way.

besides E-speak...
if there have any new third party synthesizer for IOS?

I absolutely love the default Australian Karen voice. It’s so clean and smooth. It is such an even read. By that I mean, it’s very natural and inflecting. If you tried to use her enhanced, our premium counterpart it tends to be inflections and very unnatural places so they don’t read as evenly. I’ve also had issues where the premium version of Karen will actually crash partway through reading something and he brought back up to the top of the screen while waiting blocks of text. This happened mostly in iOS 16, but it does definitely happen for sure still in iOS 18. This is on an iPhone SE third generation and it’s updated to the latest iOS 18.5. I’m also experienced this on my iPad mini sixth generation. I am using the regular Samantha Voice for my iPad though. I use a different voice for each device so that I know which one is speaking to me at any given time. So on my iPhone SE Third generation I am using default Karen. On my iPad mini six generation I’m using default Samantha. And I even have an iPhone 5 lying around in my parents house still functions and I’m not. I’m using default Tessa. I just found the default voices to have a much more even inflection while reading as well as better response of times. I also got run into issues with those voices crashing the devices. So I think right now we are better off process or wise for all of our devices to use default voices that are preinstalled or to download the default counterpart of one that we would like. This is my own personal experience as I said I had less crashing with those kind of voices so I tend to use those for over exclusively. We were talking an actual computer such as a laptop or a Mac for instance that had more processing power, but I definitely go for premium high on my Windows computer. So this kind of makes sense. And I understand the reason that people would like higher quality voices and right now. I just don’t think we have the processor power to do that and the phones and iPads just yet. I believe that will come at some point. But I am also somebody who grew up with my first computer having the keynote gold Fred Voice. I just actually found out recently that there are different voices and then Keynote gold. I was very surprised by this. I did not know. But I grew up on the default for Voice and honestly as far as I knew back then that was the only Voice. I also grew up using eloquence in jaws. I got tired of that Jaws because I actually physically get headaches from eloquence. But I figure right now if I can use the default vocalizer voices for my iPhone and iPad then I should be just fine. I also tend to do not like the human sound of the 11 labs voices. To me those are two human. I want my machines and humans to be very much distinguishable from each other. I would rather have a more machine, sounding voice on the machine. So I guess what I’m trying to say is I’d rather have a more mechanical sounding voice coming out of a machine versus something that sounds so human, but I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. But then again, as I said this is because I’ve grown up with the more mechanical voices. I even have been known to use Agnes, Bruce, Vicky, and Victoria, while I’m doing other things in reading. I really don’t have any enhanced or premium voices or voices downloaded into voiceover at this point. I use just the regular voices. I think the enhanced and premium ones sound great but we just need to get better process and then we can use them without crashing. Hopefully, that will be something that will be fixed at some point. I would eventually love to have the premium high voices that we actually get for our computers to be on the phone iPad. Because if you listen very carefully and you get any of the enhance or premium voices, they are not the same ones that the max and windows computers enjoy. Just some thing I’ve observed over the years of using voices. I’ve been totally blind and spray so I’ve had to use screen readers exclusively in order to use my technology. I apologize for any dictation errors in this post. I do have to use dictation because I have CP and I cannot physically edit The rotor with my hands. It is actually physically painful to even swipe or tap this phone. But thank you for taking that into consideration as you’re reading this and I tried to speak as clearly as possible. I do have trouble speaking too. I actually just got hearing aids on June 16 so please forgive any dictation errors that you may find here I will try to do my best to speak it deliberately and clearly accessible. This is a work in progress. Also, please understand that I do forget to insert punctuation occasionally. I don’t mean to and I will definitely continue to improve my post as I keep going on this website.

Whenever I’m using my device, I usually set the voice speed to 100%, even when I’m reading books. The only voice that seems to handle that speed properly is Samantha Default. I don’t think the other voices have been fully optimized for that kind of reading. I’ve tried switching to some of the premium voices, hoping they’d work better, but they don’t. They’re great for navigating the device—menus, Siri, etc.—but when it comes to reading books, they fall apart. I don’t know if I’m the only one experiencing this, but when those premium voices are sped up, even just a little, they become so fast that you can’t make out what they’re saying at all. It’s not that they sound squeaky or like a chipmunk—it’s too fast and no longer sounds natural. That makes no sense to me. If this is supposed to be a premium voice, shouldn’t the quality be consistent at all speeds?
Strangely enough, I prefer Samantha default over Samantha Enhanced. The enhanced version doesn’t sound as clean, which is kind of ironic. I was telling this to someone who works on text-to-speech, like, “I downloaded the premium voices thinking the quality would be better, but nope.” The only other voice that works somewhat decently at high speeds is Alex, I think. It should be at a high-speed, but still be crisp and clear, similar to the Alexa voice from Amazon. Most of the others turn into this whiny, grating mess that’s unbearable on the ears. I’m like—no, just… no.

Now, about child voices. I get that some might think it’s a fun idea, especially for content aimed at kids, but realistically, I don’t see Apple adding them. There are privacy concerns and ethical issues, and knowing how many creeps are out there, it’s probably not worth the risk. Even if it’s a synthetic voice and not an actual child, the whole concept gets tricky fast. You don’t know where the data’s coming from or how they’re training those voices to sound accurate. Personally, I find the idea of using a child’s voice to read certain content kind of awkward and unsettling. It might sound cool in theory, but in practice, it doesn’t sit right. I’m not saying it should never be done—but when it comes to kids and tech, sometimes it’s better to play it safe. There are people out there with twisted minds and dark intentions, and with the way technology is evolving, the potential for misuse is too close for comfort. Best not to tempt fate, I suppose.

I think I may be the only person who can answer the question on why there are so limited text to speech engines on the App Store. The reason is because Apple restrict VoiceOver so much that you literally have to have special permissions to make a text speech engine for VoiceOver because when you go into the Settings app Greater than accessibility greater than VoiceOver greater than speech and then select your voice you’ll see a expendable section depending on the operating system you’re running so for iOS 18 you will have to expand it but for iOS 17 it will be completely different but anyway you’ll see this section with the text to speech engine name and all the text to speech engine voices but do you have to have a special permission that you have to sign with Apple Which I don’t understand and it doesn’t make sense because on android you can just make your own text to speech engine, but I think I may be the only person here that can explain that however there maybe more people that can as well. Anyway, that’s My thing to say here. I hope this helps.

He was my favorite voice but then I think it was IOS 11 that removed him from voiceover, you can still use him in apps that let you change the voice for the app

I would love it if he could be used with voiceover again

Just to let you guys know, you can still use the voice Aaron on macOS with VoiceOver and you don’t even have to install it, it is pre-installed. You can even use other classic voices like Arthur and Martha as well, which I think is really handy for those who want to hear legacy voices on new versions of an operating system such as macOS. Anyway, just wanted to mention that.

you could do this in macOS Ventura and Sonoma, but you can’t now in macOS 15 and 26 as far as I am aware.

It would only make sense that I did not know this because I have a Mac running macOS 14 so that would make sense if I didn’t know that. Plus, thanks. Now more legacy voices have gone, and the only proper legacy voice is Alex which hasn’t been updated for around two years now. Please Apple, give us more text to speech stuff. This is getting ridiculous and I am really annoyed at Apple for this.

Probably already mentioned, but around ios10 or ios 12 all siri voices became just so bad in quality with voiceover, I don't know if it was across all languages but I've never used any french siri voice since then.

Where the heck is Acapela for iOS? I use the voices on Android on my BrailleSense 6 all the time and I'm logged in! It's weird—-Android has had alternative TTS engines for years now and everybody's on the bandwagon, but when Apple finally makes that possible in iOS 16, only 3 companies/devs are actually trying to make this happen. eSpeak-NG, in my opinion, is really good for language support but extremely grating on the ears. RHVoice has a bit better quality but the iOS app still doesn't support English the last time I checked. The best one I've found so far in the quality department was CerePlay, which contains all the CereProc voices. However, trying to navigate with VoiceOver with the default voice that was already in the app was a bit too slow and honestly kind of a pain the last time I used it. Still don't understand why Acapela is on macOS but not the iPhone. Only time will tell...

Many moons ago, Ivona TTS was available as an option for iOS. But Amazon acquired Ivona in 2013, and by 2017 support for it on iOS was deprecated.
I have no idea why Acappella never made it to iOS. 😖