I hope you all are having a great weekend! I wanted to come here and lighten things up a little with another discussion forum. I'm curious what answers I'll get!
If you have more than one Apple device, do you like the same voice on each device or do you like to mix it up?
Are the voices on your devices different speaking rates? Even if it’s the same voice.
When choosing a voice, what matters more: prnunciation, understanding it at fast rates, or crisp and clear quality?
I'm curious what I'll get for these!
For me personally, I'm starting to prefer that my devices have different voices, at least my mac and my phone. I don't care as much about the watch. That being said, the speaking rates are different. I have Siri voice 4 at 100 percent rate on my phone because the beta messed it up, so it's a little on the slow side otherwise. I used to care a lot about inflection and pronunciation and all that, but now I prioritize sound quality more than anything. Some voices, like eloquence, are great until you're out in public somewhere and have to have it full blast.
Comments
Same voice and settings on all my Apple devices
I use Alex with the same settings on all my Apple devices, as I find knowing exactly how a voice is going to sound, no matter the device I'm using, makes it easier for me to concentrate and absorb information in the long run.
Choices of voices
On my current, and back up iPhone's, I use Samantha compact these days. My old Intel MacBook Pro, running macOS 12 (Monterey), uses Alex. Granted I have not used that laptop in two years, but it has used the Alex voice since I first got that laptop in 2014.
Alex
Alex for me and has been since I started on the Mac in 2009. speech rate is 100% on all devices. I immediately turn off the automatic voice switching, all of the pitch changes aside from capitalisation, and almost all of the verbosity. I also turn off the Voiceover sounds, and find it frustrating that i can't get rid of them on APple TV. A screenreader is a tool and I want it to work as efficiently as possible, not be bombarded by multiple voices, announcements I didn't ask for and sound effects.
Different
Currently I have Serena Premium on my Mac, Irish lady Siri on my phone, Stephanie on my watch and Irish male Siri on my Apple TV.
I struggle to find a voice on the Watch that I like. It doesn't really cope with premium voices (it's an original Ultra). Stephanie is kind of the least bad one.
The TV voice was a small concession to the wife as she has to put up with VoiceOver blathering on about how long is left at the start of everything we watch, so I at least chose a voice she liked.
I think it's really important to have a voice that is clear and understandable. A lot of voices are quirky and pronounce certain things strangely. I've tried a lot of voices and there will always be something that annoys me to the point of having to switch. (I should say I've rejected all the male voices I've used for these reasons too, so I don't just use the female ones). I think using a British voice for me works better as the regional things are more in tune to what I' used to.
I really shouldn't use Irish lady Siri for that reason - I can't deal with her as fast as Serena Premium. One day I will go back to that. I say that every time we have one of these posts about voices but haven't done it yet.
I think the fact that I use different voices in different places is more that there isn't really the perfect voice for me. If there was I would use it everywhere without a doubt.
As far as speaking rate is concerned my phone and Mac were the same when I was using Serena Premium on both, but now I have the phone set slower so I can cope with Siri. For quite a long time my phone was set to a faster rate because I tend to use my Mac for more technical things and my phone for leisure things so needed to hear more clearly on my Mac. But I think I've got a little more in tune with VoiceOver now, well either that or the Mac has slowed down its voices a little, who knows.
Tom
Use Tom but for some app I use different voices, message, email, and music. When I open the apps the voice changes. Like it that way.
I have one device.
The voice I use is Alex and has been ever since I got my first phone, but I have a number of voices in the rotor, Samantha, Tom, Daniel and a few Siri voices. I forget which ones now..
Different voices on different devices
Hi, I am using regular Karen on my iPhone 15. I’m using regular Samantha on my iPhone SE 2022. On my windows laptop I’m using Karen premium high. For my Apple devices I never put the speaking rate past 50% because I can’t process it any faster. The regular voices seem to read the most evenly as in not having a natural inflections. They read things more how a person would read them in terms of inflection, not necessarily the quality of the voice itself if that makes sense. There’s also less issues with the voiceover crashing and saying screen curtain on when you’re in the middle of reading, jumping or even watching YouTube video. It definitely still happens with the regular voices though. This isn’t quite as frequent or as bad as the bug that we had when iOS 16 we just was happening pretty much all the time with enhanced and premium voices. I think for me the quality of the Voice and the way that it reads things is probably the most important. Just always gave me to be weird pronunciation issues with screen leaders because the machine voices. I’ve never liked using the Siri voices for voiceover. Every time I’ve done that they’ve had some really odd inflection issues. They definitely crashed a lot more frequently at least in my experiences. I’m really hoping eventually that we get access to premium high voices. I would love to use those, but there’s just too many issues with the enhanced premium voices that are currently available. So I think for now it’s going to be the ones that I mentioned earlier in this post. I’ll see what happens when iOS 27 but I’m keeping these for now. As far as for itself, I use American Voice for I’m both devices. I have never had a Mac so I really don’t know what I would use for that but it would probably be Karen probably the premium high variant. I would use Karen on both of my phone devices and I may do it again, but it was a suggestion to Apple for me. Once I first got my hearing aids that it would be easier to have two different voices on different devices. But I may switch that. I do like Karen a little bit more than Samantha, but I do like Samantha too, so it’s kind of hard to say. But those have always been my two favorite voices since I’ve had an iPhone.