just a discussion on VoiceOver voices

In my iPad 9, watch 9 and iPhone 16 pro max. Long live cats.

This is my favorite kind of topic. I’m so glad you created this discussion. So my favorite Voice is Karen and Samantha and I like them in all of their variants. And my iPhone 15 I use Karen and then my iPhone SE third generation I used Samantha. I currently have them sent to Karen enhanced and Samantha enhanced, but as I said, I like all the variant switch to using their regular devices earlier enhanced or Karen‘s case sometimes premium. I wish we had a Samantha premium. I hope that we get all of the vocalizer premium voices eventually. But those are definitely my favorite ones. I’ve even named my phones after the voices that I use. That was a suggestion that Apple had for me to use different voices on my different devices because I just started wearing hearing aids in June last year so I was getting confused as to which phone was talking to me so that’s what I decided to use Samantha on my SE phone, which is not my primary device and then my primary device or iPhone 15 I’m using Karen. Because of my two favorites. I used to use in the computer, but then when we can get vocalizer for Jaws. I jumped on the chance and downloaded every single one of those voices. Well, the English speaking ones anyway. I don’t know any other language have to use a different synthesize your language.

I've tried other voices and always go back to good old Samantha. But for Serie, can't remember which number, but it's the one who sounds like a black man.

For the previous comment, are you like American Siri voice three. That’s a pretty cool Voice. On my SE phone I use American four with enhance Samantha. So are you using regular Samantha or enhanced Samantha? Both to awesome.

Eloquence the end.

Which eloquence Voice? There’s eight. I think if I remember one of your podcast before I think you’re using read. So I guess the other question would be you prefer American eloquence or British eloquence? When I used to use eloquence, I always used British eloquence once I knew that I could do that. But I also do have some voices and eloquence that if I were using that synthesizer, I would still use today, but it would only be in jaws not in the phones. So in jaws, I used Glenn, Bobby and Sandy. And then you know if they improve the sound quality for me in the phone. I would probably use the Eddie flow or Sandy voices but like I said, they’d have to fix the sound quality a bit first. That’s cool though. Everybody likes whatever they like. I’m glad you found something that works for you.

I'm used to hear eSpeak NG from every device that has a speaker and capable to run Doom. My favorite settings are: Robert as a Voice Variant, Pitch at 80% and Intonation at 0%. I were extremely excited when Apple added support for Custom TTS in iOS 16, which allows me to install eSpeak NG on iPhone as well. A little bit frustration that custom voices are not available on the Apple Watch, but it seams not a gamechanger.

Eloquence read for English, Espeak max for Turkish on the Iphone. I don't really like natural sounding voices, because to me they sound anything but..

I can definitely understand that of not liking Natural voices. Because what time is to happen with the voices that are more natural as the inflections themselves are unnatural so they don’t read something the way that a person would read. They put inflections in wrong places so it just sounds very uneven. I get that. That’s actually why I never used enhanced to premium variance for a very long time because the regular voice is to read more evenly. I can totally see that. Yeah, he is pretty cool. I’ve used it a few times on my iPhone. The variant voice is that I like is Linda, John, Jackie, Reed, and Zach. But I’ve never used these speak on any device other than iPhone so I don’t know how the sound quality of those voices is different or not but I may actually go ahead and reinstall that app on my phone. It is pretty cool that Apple allowed for customizing of TTS voices. I think I would’ve used eloquent if it wasn’t something I had grown up with. My first computer actually had the keynote go Voice on window 31 so yeah I wouldn’t mind having that come back to phones or something that would be awesome or even like off or something. I would never use those voices, but I’ve heard them things and I think they’re awesome. I think it’ll be cool if we get the deck talk voices in iOS and Keynote gold in iOS but I don’t know that we can do that maybe

Before elequence, I used alex on all my devices but after elequense came to apple devices, I switched to elequense reed on all devices.

Eloquence Reed all the way. It's what I'm used to, and I like the predictable nature of the speech. The "natural" voices, I find, do not always handle inflection properly. If someone puts a question mark or an exclamation point on a sentence, Eloquence will reflect that in inflection whereas, at least in my experience, the "natural" voices will not.

Regarding the suggestion about bringing DECtalk to iOS, I would love to see this. The huge caveat though is that it would need to be one of the classic DECtalk versions... Nothing from version 5.0, for example. It's a long shot for sure, but we all thought Eloquence was a no-go until Apple delivered it.

I think since we’ve got an eloquent now, I think almost anything can happen if it ends up working for iOS. Read isn’t too bad of an eloquent voice, but I would use the British version if I was going to use it. I remember eloquence when it was to wait and flow. I’m sure anybody here probably remembers that. I actually didn’t really mind Wade, until I found out that I guess which Voice is and then I started using Bobby Glenn and Sandy. That was back in like draw 3.3 in 1998. Yeah, that just shows how long I’ve been using this stuff for.

With the speakers does not sound good. To rebutted, in my windows PC with jaws and headset cool. Long live cats.

Yeah, eloquent definitely sounds better on windows and it does on the iPhones. I don’t know what the heck they did to it on the iPhones, but it’s like all muddy and muffled. I would use it if they can fix the sound quality. I mean that might possibly happen so I’m willing to give that a shot. Maybe and I was 27 or something. I’ll look at it again to see how it is. I forgot that I use some of the Apple voices sometimes too. I like the ones like Agnes and Bruce and Vicky Victoria I’ve even used Fred and Ralph a couple of times and I used Alex a little bit, but I wasn’t the biggest fan of him. Yeah, I just kinda like to play around a lot of them, but like I said before I care to me, I definitely my favorites. Eloquence is pretty good at inflecting?! Though. I will give it that.

Yeah, eloquence is definitely quieter than all of the other voices. And you’re right even with the VoiceOver volume 100% it’s still like that. Hey, I have hoping that someday that will change. And if it does, they may use eloquence again at some point May being the keyword though. I’m still loving Samantha and Karen right now.

Here is what I filed on Eloquence. If anyone wants to join in, please do.
FB20953555 (please add an Eloquence volume increase)

the eloquence volume even when voiceover volume is at its max is half the volume of other TTS engines example Samantha please add an internal volume setting
for Eloquence to increase the output of eloquence from 100 percent to 200 percent in increments of 10 percent. This is needed to increase the volume of
eloquence to get it closer to other TTS engines. it will also help those hard of hearing.

That’s awesome that you put in that feedback. I just started wearing hearing aids in June of last year, so I definitely could see why this would definitely be needed. They also need to fix the higher sample rates so that it actually works the way it’s supposed to. But hopefully that will change. Apple’s pretty good at listening to us so you just have to keep letting them know.

Yes, it is missing its two front teeth.
"All it wants for Christmas is it's two front teeth".
"All it wants for Christmas is it's two front teeth".
Lol.

A long time ago, within an OS far, far away... I would have said Alex above all else. 32 bit macOS Alex, or OSX Alex to be more precise, was absolutely amazing. Not so much these days in my humble opinion.
Nowadays, I use a voice that is very similar to Karen premium on both my Echo Dot, and the Alexa application on my iPhone. For my Windows laptop, I use Samantha premium. On both my primary iPhone and test device iPhone, I use default Samantha.
What can I say, Karen and Samantha are tried and true. 😀

I prefer the good old Samantha compact at 100%, or Zoe at 100%. She's a little easier to use for long periods without fatigue. If I'm not reading Braille I pretty much wan the tts voice to be transparent, EG to just kind of think the words as I hear them. So I'm boring and haven't switched voices on my IOS or Mac devices in many years. :)

On Windows it's a different story though. I prefer Eloquence or Dectalk on PC, but not the IOS version of Eloq. It pauses and just reads in this haulting way compared to JAWS or NVDA. I think it has to do with how Apple is sending index/pauses to the synth.
Plus Eloq is muffled on an Iphone speaker. something like Samantha or Zoe, now, that cuts through Any background noise and is suited to smaller speakers.

I primarily use Alex on my iphone, iPad and Mac. On the Apple Watch I mix it up with Karen.
I use Jamie on my work phone, which sounds very similar to Malcolm on my work Windows laptop.
Eloquence is the spawn of the devil, I hate it with every fibre of my being 😂
Theoretically I might like to use one of the Siri voices, but I find when used for VoiceOver, their pronunciation falls short.
Dave

I prefer the Siri voices. Either US English 2 or 4. Although I do have Zoe and Tom in my roter as well.

I use Alex on every device I can get him on. It's to the point that he doesn't register as a voice anymore, but rather just how text sounds. Sometimes my thoughts are even narrated in Alex's voice. Maybe I'm on my devices too much...
As for Siri, I use Voice 5. They sound really friendly and I like the androgynous thing they have going on.

If you are, is time to put the phone down. Remember the song from sesame street, put down the ducky.

I think I pick voices based on their inflections in our friendliness. Karen and Samantha just sounds so friendly to me. Granted that is totally subjective but somebody was asking if we pick voices based on inflection or pronunciation. I mean, I love Karen‘s accent so there’s kind of that aspect too but for me like if I was going to use an American Voice Samantha is my favorite one. Those have always been the voices. I’ve switched back-and-forth between ever since my first iPhone. But my first iPhone was an iPhone 8 with iOS 13.3 something on it. And I forgot to mention before he also sometimes like to listen to Kait either variant but probably preferably enhanced. I do hope we get all of the premium vocalizer voices in Apple‘s products someday. We have a lot of them. I hope we get more. Into the person who said that Jamie sounds similar to Malcolm that’s because he is. He’s the same voice. He just got renamed on Apple devices for some reason.

I quite like the Siri voices but they do have problems pronouncing single characters or numbers - they just randomly have a stupidly low speech rate which is a deal-breaker for me. I like the Irish Siri voices - the Irish lady is very pleasant to listen to, but I use the Irish male one on my Apple TV - a small concession to mrs grieves. I do have an activity to switch me to the English lady Siri at a slower rate for those times I struggle to hear what is being said.

So on everything else I use Serena Premium. I never liked this voice until the Premium version and now I find it fine. There is a tendency for the female English voices to all sound like posh BBC newsreaders from the 80s, and this one is no exception but I find it works well enough.

I've tried a number of voices but usually, like Siri, there is just one thing that becomes a deal-breaker. I used Jamie for a bit but there were certain things he pronounced weirdly and I had to stop.

Before the Premium voices came along I was using Karen enhanced. I was finding the voice so much clearer and louder than some of the other voices. But I generally think it's best to use a voice in your own region because there are often little subtleties that make more sense that way.

I also have never understood Eloquence. I actually do have it set in Windows for NVDA, but only because it's the only one that seems to be able to pitch sift capital letters properly when reading letter by letter. I also have this feeling that it's my fault I don't like the voices and it's maybe almost a right of passage that I should eventually click with them. But they are horrible.

The Microsoft Natural voices are the best though. I'd love something like that on my Mac.

You can speed up the Siri voice and VoiceOver the same way you do with everything else. I’ve used them before. My favorite voices are American voice to American voice four and British voice one in British voice three. If I was going to use a vocalizer British voice, it would be Kait enhanced or pregnant if we ever get access to premium. Based in jobs, we have premium high. But yeah, I know what you mean about all the British voices sounding like these passionate reporters. Totally got that. I’m from the US, but I’ve heard enough of the British news reporters to know what you’re talking about. Does anybody else think that Stephanie is really similar to Serena? I’ve kind of gotten that feeling from her. But she’s not too bad of a voice. I’ve used her a few times.

I diched jaws and use narrator on windows. I love the Sonia, as she is responsive and the closest british voice to sound othenticly british. the other voices such as Surina on the vocalizer is pritty robotic, and it does ot sound othentic

I agree, Serena is not that expressive. I tried her a couple times and had to switch to Kait due to Serena‘s lack of expression. If I were going to use a British female vocal voice, I would use Kait because to me she is the most expressive. I really can’t wait till we get all over the vocalizer voices in premium on the phones and iPads stuff like that. I’m pretty sure they’re already available for Max. We got the premium high ones for windows for jaws. I mean, I would love that in phones too, but I don’t think they have the processing power to deal with them so premium is still better than no premium at all. Take us to iOS 16 even get any premium voices. But that’s OK. I’m glad we have them at all. I have never used a narrator so I don’t know about Sonia, but that sounds cool.

Who wants the real speak voices back? I know I do. Especially the British one Emily. That just happens to be my name so you know that’s part of it, but I also loved that voice, and I was sad when they got rid of it. We also need some more voices. There’s no Scottish Siri and we need new Irish, South African and Indian voices. It’s only fair. All the other accents got new voices like American British and Australian. So it only makes sense. Also the voices need to work better with voiceover. They’re great as voices but then when I get to be used with voiceover, they just don’t have the same expressions quality is even different and I feel like they make VoiceOver watch luggage somehow but I’m hoping that will change someday because I do like the voice to read me things sometimes.

Voices are nice but bugs are bad. Apple need to fix the bugs and we will be happy. Long live cats.

The friend is about our favorite voices. We don’t have to always talk about how bad the bugs and Apple are every darn time. There’s a new thread posted about something. Smiley face look I get it so frustrating. That’s not what this thread is about. We’re talking about the voices that we like to speech.

Nuts. Bugs are nice and apple over did it. NY city was the chanpion on bugs and now is apple. I will keep using Tom. Tried other voices but always go back to Tom. Happy now!!! Long live cats.

If we're including Windows Narrator, then I have to add my 2 cents on Jenny. Jenny is one of the Neural voices for Narrator, and she is pretty awesome. The Neural voices are amazing for listening to large bodies of text being read aloud, whether it's a book, a news article, a blog, or whatever. If it's a good chunk of text, the Neural voices are definitely the way to go for a nice listening experience. 🙂

The YouTube link below has some samples of the Neural voices for Windows, including a brief sample with Jenny. Enjoy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHey7dlI0mc

P.S. I know this thread was about VoiceOver voices, but somebody posted above about Narrator, so... 😛

@Singer Girl - I do miss RealSpeak Tom. This was the variant of the Tom voice on NOAA Weather Radio here in the U.S., and it holds a very special place in my heart (along with DECtalk). I also really miss the original version of the compact Samantha voice on the iPhone that was present in iOS 3 and iOS 4.

Agree with Michael. She sounds so different now. Nuts. Long live cats.

I never had an iPhone from that far back. I did get a chance to hear that version of Samantha though. She does sound pretty awesome. I guess they tried to make her more expensive or something so yeah, but she definitely sounds very different now. But I like both versions. Yeah we definitely need the real. Speak voices back.

I checked out the UD link. I really don’t like those voices. They actually sound almost too human. Humans to be distinguishable for machines. Would rather have the vocalizer voices. But I’m glad I got to hear the voices anyways to see what people are talking about. Those sound a lot to me like voices. They don’t really seem to be too much different. I’ll stick with good old Samantha and Karen. Those other ones sound too much like voices to me. They sound too much like the voices to me. They sound too much like the Siri voices.

Got my first iPhone on July of 2012. Used to be on an Android, if you can believe that. It was an iPhone 4S from Verizon. That was when Siri was first introduced to iOS, and Siri basically had Samantha's voice. But not the Samantha of today, the Samantha of Wayback win. Let me tell you, Samantha of Wayback win was flipping awesome. Samantha up now is tolerable, But I would take the wayback when machine any day if I could have the original Samantha voice again.

I definitely don't like Samantha's voice and I don't like eloquence either. But that is only my opinion. I use the Siri voices on my Apple Watch and my iPhone.

It sounds terrible, but at least it's predictable, goes fast and has stupid low latency. Also it runns on almost everything, except apple watch, which is a shame.
Before that I used to use Samantha, but I was getting tired of the speed bottleneck so I decided, multiple times, to switch, that last one worked, I guess.