Acapela voices for iOS 11?

Apple has a contract with Nuance, the makers of the vocalizer voices. So, unfortunately I highly doubt that any other provider of TTS voices will make it into iOS 11 especially since the first developer beta has already dropped. It would be nice and I do agree that choice is a good thing. But this is how Apple wants it, I guess.

I have the IOS11 beata on my iPod and haven't seen any new voices yet. Although I only looked at the English voices.

I really like Ivona TTS better than Acapela.

What I don't get is that there are several languages that apple has. (catalan is a good example) and vocalizer has. but apple just won't integrate.

There is tons of choice for French. To start there is at least 1 (I think 2) for French and French Canada. Then don't forget siri male and female. (and akapela English is horrible, I must say. although I do wish I could have akapela Russian, but oh well. At least I have it in voice dream.)

Unfortunately Apple can't support every single language on earth. Can you imagine the size of iOS if it had 2 or 3 synthesizer voices for every single speaking language on planet earth? iOS would be huge! I am just happy for the voices that we do have, and if I want alternative voices there's always voice dream reader.

One thing Apple could do to eliminate the size problem is that while it is downloading the latest iOS, it could check to see what your phone's default language was and simply download a default TTS voice for that one language. Then the user could decide what other voices/languages to download. Just a thought from someone who is not a programmer/developer.

Do we really need to focus primarily on voices? Before we think about something as minor as a TTS voice, it would be better for Apple to improve VoiceOvs performance and usability for third-party app engines. It's more important to me if Apple has a system that does its job seamlessly rather than a system with lots of voices that's quite buggy.
These are just my two cents.

I'm happy with the voices I have.

I used Samantha Enhanced for a while when I first got my ipad, because I had no idea there were other voices, let alone how to change them!

Then once ios10 came out and knew voices were introduced, my inner geek kicked in. I Downloaded every voice and listened to them all and did a little testing to find the best voice. Then, I met Ava. I downloaded both her voices. The regular voice was too muffled, at least in my ofinion and sounded too computerized (if there is such a thing(. I tried her Enhanced voice, and... well, let's just say that I haven't looked back. She sounded so natural wito almost no hint of computer! My family/friends joke about how she sounds so seductive! (wink) I've used Ava ever since and have no intention of going back to Samantha Enhanced.

As for voiceover, I agree with one of the previous posters. Apple should put its resources into improving performance, stability, giving us knew features, fixing bugs and app integration (although I think some of the last one is on the devs). I think they should put resources into improving voiceover, but also other accessibility forms. That's my 2¢ worth.

I was just pointing out how I thought it could be done. Anyway, I'd take Neospeech voices over Acapela voices any day.

Hello,

We have to remember that IOS is suppose to be accessable and inclusive. So while the English speaking folks are happy, the French or Russian speakers may not be happy with only one choice. If it was reversed, English only had two choices while everyone else got 5 or more choices, how would each side feel then?

As for the OP, you can try Jailbreaking if you still want to remain with the IOS platform. I understand there are more choices there.

HTH and good luck.

I can understand your preference, but I think the chances are not high. However, there are already choices for voice within the vocalizer system for IOS 10. This includes a total of 8 voices in French, which you can see by going to settings/general/accessibility/voiceOver/speech, then select French. The voices for European French are Audrey, Aurelie, Thomas, and the two Siri voices. There are three others for Canadian French. I do not speak French, so I don't know if these are any better than whatever one you're using, but you could try them. Remember that you should download the full database (called enhanced quality) before making the final decision. I can somewhat sympathize with those who would prefer other vocalizer voices be added; I speak Spanish, and I prefer the Colombian-accented voices available from Vocalizer, as that is the closest dialect to the one I speak. However, as these aren't available in IOS, I make do with the Mexican Spanish voices, to which I can acclimatize easily. By the way, there are also three Russian voices (Milena, the default, Katya, and Yuri).

I am happy with what we've got right now. But if they gave me an option to choose between acapela and another text to speech engine, I would go for Ivona TTS. At least, in my opinion, Ivona does a better job than Acapela. Acapela has many more voices, but Ivona sounds much better.
Once again, I just want to say that I am very happy with what we've got right now. If there are new voices coming for iOS, I'll be even happier.

The original post said that they might try to switch to Android because of a better choice of voices for French. I've tried Android, hoping that I might be able to use the four languages I require but I have been disappointed. While I can use all four languagees I want on the Android phone, it is very difficult to switch from voice to voice. You cannot do it on the fly via the rotor or an equivalent, and it takes for ever to activate a new voice to read something. Not to mention that iOs has automatic voice switching which Android doesn't have. I would think twice before switching to Android in case you are disappointed as I am. It was for me an expensive experiment with the result that I hardly use Android now. Still, at least I know now. If somebody has to work in a multi-lingual environment, then iOS is definitely still a winner for me.

I work in a multilingual environment. The only language I'm not happy with is Spanish, because there isn't a good Castilian Spanish voice, and I detest the latin American accent as a whole so I wind up using whatever the default Castilian voice is because it's the lesser of 2 evils.