discussion question about VoiceOver

Always have it 60 or 55%. Same with audiobooks, I know some people like it fast but for me I like the voice to be normal. Alicia, for me it would be like playing a song faster speed. FYI, did you know that the last 3 letter of your name is CIA? Long live cats.

Mine is at 60 was 57% then at the start of 26.0 there was a bug that prevented you from choosing anything not in steps of 5. That is now fixed but never changed it back. Personally, I just prefer normal speeds as I think very fast voices make me want to breathe for them lol.

Some other synths are faster, but it's probably around the same rate. The big people I hear pushing speed for supposed efficiency are mostly coders, so far as I can tell. On the one hand, I get it, sort of. OTOH, as speech gets faster, it gets choppier and more clipped. It's just tiring to listen to. I'm sure I could do it, but I just don't see the point. I don't have anything that I need to get done right the hell now where a second or two saved from faster speech is going to make the difference.

In general though, you just boost it as minimally as possible, and deal with that, get used to it, then do it again, and again. That's what I remember doing when I started using speech back in the 80s and that's what people who have it cranked up insanely fast say they did to get there. Oh back to who uses it, I think some musicians do too. But I just scroll through or hit control to silence it or do whatever, if I know I'm on the option I want. Again, having it faster makes it choppier, and since I haven't gotten used to it, it ultimately slows me down because I'm just spending more time processing what the thing said.

I do listen to some podcasts and Youtube videos at faster speeds, but audio books only if the narrator is incredibly slow. The stuff I listen to faster I tend to vary the rate with, so though it's faster, it doesn't sound unnatural as a voice, you can just tell it's faster, if that makes sense. Again, it's that clipping I think, that hits a point where it just sounds really not human to me, and that's what I don't like.

I too like voiceover to sound natural and not crazy fast. Also agree, long live cats and German Shepherd guides!

I never put the voice over speaking right past 50% as my brain can’t process the speech any faster. I’ve tried it once just to see what it would sound like faster and it just sounded like a bunch of noise. It didn’t even sound like intelligible words. So I’m putting it back to 15. I’ve never changed it since. In the same thing when using jaws, I don’t put the speech fast on that either. I want my synthesize speech to still sound at the rate of normal human speech. I can’t process faster, speaking rights. I really don’t even change the picture of the voices either. I just give them other default levels. I think our brain is just all process things differently. Anytime I’ve heard of anybody crank up their synthesize speech really fast I can’t understand it at all so I just don’t do it, but I think the way that people have gotten used to that is that you gradually increase the speed it’s something you can’t do quickly. You have to put the numbers gradually for your brain to process that and then as you get used to that, you keep speeding it as far as you want. That’s what I’ve heard from people that I’ve done it. I’ve been using synthesize speech on my life, but I have never been able to put it faster and I think that’s OK. That’s why they have different rates.

Hi,
I'm using the Jamie voice, at 70%, as I type.
It's very stable, unlike Eloquence, which is my preference, with Reed being my favorite voice, but for some unknown reason, it keeps silently crashing.
More often than not, I have to restart Voiceover by triple pressing the side button & even then, sometimes, I have to do that multiple times, to get Voiceover to restart, which is why when 26.5 is released next week, I plan to completely restore my phone.

Fascinating topic!

I have Eloquence at 70%, but sometimes switch back to Samantha compact which is a bit slower, so I turn that up to 80%.

I also speed up my audio books in BARD by about 50%, unless it's a book read by the author and I want to hear their natural speaking voice.

Whenever people ask me how I understand it or if it's even speaking English, I just say "years of practice," and then make a joke about how it's ironic that the only people who can understand the "fine print" in car adds on the radio where they speed up the narrator, is a blind person. lol

I prefer it to be at 65 percent. That's the perfect speed for me. Any faster and I miss things that it says and I have to have it repeat. Plus that's fast enough to where other people can't understand what it's saying, if someone is evesdropping.

does anyone remember using cassette recorders in the 1970s that had the ability to speed up the speech? I would record my classes, and then take notes in the evening. Of course, speeding up the speech made people sound like chipmunks. My mom always wondered how in the world I could understand it. These days, I agree with lots of the other comments that keeping the speech at a speed that is understandable is the best idea. Faster isn’t always better.

well, I use a few different voices, at varying speech rates. I use my personal voice at 70%, Alex at 60%, with WPM maximum set to 520, eloquence reed at 70%, and i mess around with different languages just to see what those voices sound like. like, how reed can be set to speak Mandrin.

I think it's been about a year since I abandoned good old Alex and switched to Vocalizer Nathan on my phone, watch and Apple TV boxes. My logic was that it would provide me with consistency across the board since I use Nathan with jaws as well. On all of the Apple devices, his speaking rate is 60%. Jaws speaking rates are measured differently, but for Nathan to sound the same on my computer as he does elsewhere, the rate is 190, which Jaws says is 40%. I can't imagine ever becoming comfortable with a speaking rate faster than this, but at the same time, anything too much slower drives me crazy.

Not to hijack this thread, but I thought I'd offer an answer to the eternal question. Why do people still use Eloquence, when it's super old and doesn't sound all human and ...

I'd never heard of Nathan, so I added it to my voice rotor. I'm now using it. There's a subject of a post on here. Here it is.

"Preorders for my Clock app are live"

Eloquence reads this as pre-or-ders, in other words, just like you'd expect it to be pronounced, at least in standard US English. Nathan reads it more like pre-ear-ders. I know what it means, partly because I've seen the post a bunch while scrolling through the latest messages.

Anyway, I find this a lot when I switch to different voices. Every voice has things it messes up, naturally. I've been using Eloquence since some time in the 90s. So I'm used to it. I rarely have to have it repeat things or spell things out. Contrast this with other voices, where I get a lot more of that. Here's a perfectly ordinary word, not a weird Twitter username or something, and this synth isn't pronouncing it correctly.

Of course, I could get used to this voice, probably without too much trouble. I've used other voices in the past when I didn't have Eloquence. But for me, since I don't have to, it's just not worth taking the time to learn whatever new to me weirdness some other voice has got going on. I thought I'd post here because like I said, this is a fairly ordinary straightforward word it's having a bit of trouble with, not something like Mister Mxyzptlk. Weirdly, it pronounces that one correctly, according to some of the canonical pronunciations that have been used over the years.

I am using Nathan at 75% speech rate on my iPhone and Stefanie at 85% on my watch this the sweet spot for me.
Any slower is too slow and any faster is uncomfortable to listen to

Use it only in my windows PC. JAWS 26. Vocalize voice are nice but E still great. Long live cats.

Now if I could have a way to speed some people up to that rate when they speak to me... I can dream right?

I cannot remember if it was iOS 17.0, or 18.0. But there are a whole hell of a lot of posts on here about people's voices disappearing after a reboot. Asking as a matter of context for my answer to the original question.
I used to like Siri voice for (US) for everything. Used to love that voice, especially for reading Kindle books via the Kindle application. I also for a time really loved Alex. When I first started using macOS way back in 2012, it was Alex all the way.
FYI, Alex (Snow Leopard) beats anything current with regards to speech synthesis on Apple products. Hands-down.

With all of that said, I currently use Samantha, default, at 65%. I also use eloquence at about 75%, but really only use eloquence when I am dealing with code.

As a Latino, those from Cuban would meet your requirement. You need to have a recorder so you can play the conversation in slow. They are the speedy Gonzales of Spanish. Long live cats.

I use Tessa at 65% English is not my native language, so I prefer hearing the language in a more natural speed.,

Eloquence Reed at 75 percent.

That whole trying to insert breaths thing is annoying. Plus because of that, it sounds a little mumbley to me. I think it's in the rotor and it's at 60-65%, because it gets harder to understand any faster. But I mean, I started on the Echo II. It had two speeds. Fast would probably drive everybody here nuts, it's so slow.

I've been using Karen, not enhanced, for at least 15 years now. Early on I was at 100%, then I was at 80% for many years. Recently, after starting to listen to videos and podcasts at higher speeds I found that it was easier to hear Karen at a higher speed, so I'm at 95% and it sounds the same as it always has to me. That last 5% sounds a bit too clipped to understand fully. I also lowered the tone on faster voices so at speed she still sounds about the same as she does when slower.

A lot of people don't seem to know that you can adjust things like tone, which helps with that too high pitch you get at higher speeds. And I learned a long time ago that more British or Australian voices seem to ennunciate more clearly. They also just sound nicer to my ear. All of the American voices sound lightly frustrated with me for using them haha.

I love Karen. She’s my favorite Voice. I like all variant of her. But I have to use her at 50%. My other Voice that I love using Samantha. I’ve used her at both very as well, although I’m currently using Samantha enhanced and then I’m using premium currently. But you’re right the British Australian versus not more.

Thanks for a thought-provoking question. I'd be willing to pay for access to the Dectalk voices on my iPhone. I grew up with Vocal Eyes in the early 1990's, and there is admittedly an emotional attachment to that voice, analogous to my reaction to a favourite radio announcer. I increased the speed of the various voices I used when they sounded too slow to me. I still remember the first time I had the thought as well as the realization that I could increase the speed with no difficulties. I'm looking forward to the possibility of more human-sounding voices in apps like ElevenReader. I prefer a robotic-sounding voice when I'm listening at higher speeds. For whatever it's worth, I'm presently using Samantha at 85%.

900 words per minute on iOS, rate 75 with rate boost on with NVDA.
I am inordinately proud of this fact.

I find it very difficult to understand speech trying to mimic little Max trainer from Mike Tyson's punch out. It's no wonder I often find myself having trouble starting games with self-voicing nonsense like Glory Frontline, because the speech at the start is just too fast for me to comprehend. Even if there is an option to slow down the speech, I still need to navigate there with that awful speed before I can even do it. I have my voice for a reason.

Good day to all. As an adaptive tech instructor, I teach people this because it's how I do speed. Oh wait, that may not have sounded right: the way I set my rate. I tell people don't worry about the number. Set it to where it sounds good. My feeling is there may be days we like a different speed. There may be reading events such as email, a book, or other things that might facilitate faster or slower reading. So, rather than being glued to a number, just listen and be comfortable. I do set everything fairly fast because as a native New Yorker, I just can't handle slow speech. However, I don't like clipped speech. So, depending on the speech synth I am using I set it so it's comfortable for me, the speed of the moment.
Long Live lab seeing eye dogs, German Shepherd guides and hm, do I dare say this: Fuzzy, furry cute lovable cats.

When I first started out with a screen reader, I felt quite pressurised to try to get the speech rate up as fast as possible. This was maybe partly because I'd spoken to someone else who said they increased their rate bit by bit over time. I think their strategy was to increase it by a menial amount each time so it made no obvious difference, then over time they would be going quite quickly. Since then things like the Mac seem to have locked the rate to go up in increments of 5 which isn't that helpful.

I can cope with a faster speech rate if I am controlling my computer, typing or doing certain simple things. If I'm trying to read something complicated, or something I need to fully absorb then I need to slow it down a bit for my brain to cope.

For a while I kept trying to go faster but it occurred to me that I was constantly having to go back and check what I'd read as I was missing a lot of things. At that point I somewhat got over the whole idea of trying to get to the fastest rate and just keep it at something more comfortable. Sometimes slower is more efficient than faster. If you can set Eloquence to 100 then good for you but I don't think it is necessary to be efficient with a screen reader.

On my Mac I have Serena Premium set to 80 and don't feel particularly inclined to try for a faster rate now. But if I was using Eloquence I\'d have to drop it right down as it is crazy fast even at lower speeds. On my phone I was using Serena at about 80 as well, but recently switched to Irish Siri and found I had to drop it down to grasp what was being said. (I'll probably switch back at some point)

I remember feeling really upset when a version of MacOs, possibly Ventura, changed the rates so that, say, 70 was actually faster than it used to be. It was quite demoralising to have to put the rate back down.

My feeling is that it probably is worth inching forwards, but if you keep finding yourself struggling to know what is being said, then there is no shame in taking a step back and deciding that enough's enough.

Another option is to have a slower voice in your back pocket - either as an additional voice or an activity, and then switch to it for certain tasks. (Probably Spoken Content would be another option but I don't use that). I also use Microsoft Edge with its speech option as it has those lovely natural voices. So if I have a complicated web page and want to read the whole thing, I fire up Edge and set it going. Which is to say you don't necessarily need to settle on a single speech rate for everything.

I just got my mac so I am just getting used to how to use voiceover on it. I am more experianced on the Iphone, but I am learning how to use the mac day by day. It's wonderfull how theirs a website to the blind and all things apple. I love it.

I love our current Voice options. I hope we don’t ever get more humans sounding voices. I want my machines to sound like machines. As I said earlier, I use vocalizer Karen and Samantha any of the variance and nothing past the rate of 50% or the pitch of 50%. I keep everything at their default. I’m using Samantha enhanced with American Siri for Siri for my other phone. I use premium Karen with British one for Siri. We just have to all use what works best for us. It is interesting how some people can listen to their screen reader so fast though my brain just cannot process that.

I have always used the Alex voice, usually between 40 and 65. I have intonation set to 90 for all speeds. I use intonation as a tool, when doing a lot of writing. The way it changes pitch according to punctuation, really helps while working on longer writings. Not during the typing so much, but when reading my writings back to me. It helps me proof read, and the pauses between sentences or phrases tells me about punctuation. I can find double periods, commas, etc. Intonation raises or lowers depending on punctuation also, I can even tell a colon from a semicolon.
Depending on the type of writing, poetry, fiction, journalism, etc; the different speeds apply. 40 or 45 for listening to the flow/cadence of poetry or lyrics, 45 to 50 for reading through fiction pieces, 55 to 65 for journalistic pieces.
I would believe that for most of us, the "sound" of the voices works for more than just speed or casual concerns. The pauses and intonation quality become an actual creation tool as well.
Keep pushing on.

That sounds like an interesting setting to have Voice and donation. I wonder why that’s not available in iOS? I know it’s not cause I’ve looked at the Voice a whole bunch of times. It’s like literally my favorite part of every operating system. Update to see if we get new voices and what the features are things like that. Wonder why they can’t do this in iOS. Maybe not enough of us today? I don’t know a little bit. It’s a really interesting idea that I wish available for us. I don’t have a Mac so I can’t test that. Maybe they weren’t enough requests to have that feature available for iOS? I didn’t even know that that was an option.

I think I've posted on other threads about this, but I basically max out the vocalizer stuff. Always use compact, default pitches. Similar with the NVDA addon.

If I'm reading something very dense or double checking my work (I do a fair amount of proof reading), I put Zoe at 80%. Still fast enough to get the job done but slow enough to hear everything once and not repeat a sentence, paragraph etc. When reading daily emails and text messages, general iOS tasks, she's at 100 all day.

I can't really use Eloquence on iOS. It's fine, but the pausing between chunks of speech is annoying. I grew up with JFW where Eloquence just spits everythingin one big chunk, with 0 pause and only inflection/minor breaks for phrases. EG:
Desktop. Folder view list view. My computer. One of 11.
And so on.

When Ios reads that, it's way too choppy with Eloq. If they can allow us to shorten index pauses, I'd be happy.

I can use Eloq comfortably at about 80% on iOS.

Also Jim, I'm almost where y're at with NVDA and Espeak. Rate boost on and 65ish%. :)

Re: get the rates up. It's not really that important unless you wanna do so. As others have said, you just pick a rate that you're happy with, and gradually increase it over a few weeks or so. If things get stressful or you go back and re-read things (excluding environmental and other distractions), your rate's too fast.

Also, I've found that the equipment you listen on matters. Espeak, I have no issues having it fast when using earbuds or my studio phones. But on bigger speakers, it's harder to hear and I need to slow it down.

That’s interesting. I never would’ve thought that the equipment that you’re listening to the speech and would make that much difference. My iPhones are just using their internal speakers. I don’t have them connected to anything with Bluetooth or any of that and the only other thing I’ve ever used in an iPhone is just the regular Apple wired EarPods. I have pairs of those for both of my phones. And I haven’t really noticed much of a difference with this speech rate with those as I also don’t really change the speech as I said earlier, so yeah that’s interesting. I would think bigger speakers would’ve made it easier to hear, but I guess it’s just one of those interesting things that the physics of sound. I really don’t like eloquence on iOS. I’ve tried to, but the quality of it. It’s just not as good compared to what it is in jaws. I really don’t use it in jaws anymore either even though I’ve grown up with it. I definitely prefer the vocalizer voices for sure. Even in Jaws I’m using Karen, but she’s the premium hibernate. I really wish we could get those for our phones, but they’re not available yet. We probably don’t have enough processing power in our phones to handle the premium high files. I wish but maybe that will come in a few more years as we get more powerful phones or something. But for now, I will enjoy caring premium. She’s the closest forgetting at the moment. I’m really happy that we got her though. She came Joyce and iOS 16.