Recently got a new iPhone 17 Pro and noticed something strange with it.
For some reason, VoiceOver's speech seems to fluctuate in volume when it speaks two different things. For example, when pronouncing the string, "settings (one new item)", the speech volume is slightly different when saying "one new item"
It's hard to describe, but very noticeable; I noticed it instantly on the setup screen and was just hoping it was a problem with the Samantha voice, but apparently not.
I'm pretty sure it's not a hardware problem. Music sounds fine, and VoiceOver isn't cutting in and out.
Anyone else seen this?
Thanks
Comments
Which variant of Samantha?
Which variant of Samantha are you using? I’m using Samantha enhanced on my iPhone SE 2022 and I haven’t seen this issue. I’ve also tried her on my iPhone 15 which is my primary device and I haven’t seen this there. But maybe if you twitch the variant of Samantha, you might be able to fix this. Have you tried restarting the phone a few times or just like resetting the voiceover settings sometimes that fixes some really good issues. Hopefully one of these things will work for you.
Audio ducking
It may or may not be the same issue as what you are describing, but I’ve had a bug for some time where, if audio ducking is set to ‘When speaking’, VoiceOver speech volume randomly fluctuates.
If you have audio ducking set to ‘When speaking’, try changing it to either ‘Off’ or ‘Always’, and see if that helps.
Dave
More Detail
After sitting down and listening more closely, I believe what is happening is that when VoiceOver speaks, the bottom speaker is initializing a split second before the top one, making it sound like the volume is fluctuating.
I have audio ducking completely off, and I've tried Enhanced Samantha, Eloquence, and another Siri Voice. It is less noticeable with Eloquence, but it's still there.
I'll have to see if I can get my hands on someone else's 17. Maybe this actually is a hardware issue with my phone after all.
Audio ducking
Does not work on 26.4. beta 4, which will be the RC, it is broken again. It worked well in 26.3.1. Long live cats.
It doesn't work on 26.3.1
At least for me. I'm facing this particular issue since initial setup my iPhone 16 on iOS 18.3.1. Then it hasn't been resolved with all 18.XX updates, with 26.0 Beta's all of which I've tried, and even with all 26.XX release versions. I completely don't want to loos audio ducking feature, since it's too useful, but this fluctuations is extremely annoying.