Which is your favorite VoiceOver voice for iOS and why?

By molly, 24 February, 2016

Forum
iOS and iPadOS

Hi. I just wanted to get some opinions on the different voices available to VoiceOver users in iOS 9. Personally I use the siri male enhanced British voice. It's absolutely perfect for me. But what voice do you guys use? Do you have a favorite?

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Comments

By Sabrina on Sunday, May 26, 2019 - 05:15

Mine is Tessa because she has the same accent as I am it is a very unique voice and is by far the best voice I have on this iPad. I always use it for my english suff.
On the Swedish language I use Klara because it is a very calm voice.

By Karok on Wednesday, June 26, 2019 - 05:15

hi, i like the alison voice, but is ava a bit quiet? do like it though.

By Ekaj on Wednesday, June 26, 2019 - 05:15

I agree with those of you who say voice preference is a subjective matter. I got my iPhone last year, and have been more or less switching between voices just for kicks. I like all of them, but currently am using Fred as he seems to be the smallest and I've got several 3rd-party apps on the device. Apple's new voice that they demonstrated a couple weeks ago at the WWDC keynote sounded very nice indeed. Kinda like the American female Siri voice that was recently introduced. Not Nickie but the other one. I'm looking forward to trying the new TTS out on both Mac and iPhone this coming fall! Eloquence would indeed be a welcome choice for me on iOS and/or Apple's other platforms, but if that cannot be done it's fine by me. I realize Apple has their limitations, as do other companies.

By roman on Friday, June 26, 2020 - 05:15

I love every voices on my iPhone. I am using samantha right ow. Vocalizer is a very human sounding text to speach for sure, but it lags in a one, but very big job. it is to express the voice in difrent pungtuations. for example: some voices do not rise their voice when they have a question mark. and almost all of the voices lag the ebelity to explain their explaination marks.

Hey. I totally agree with you. apple should make a voice like Alex in the UK English as well. Because I love the United kingdom a lot, and the way they speek english, Wow.

By Missy Hoppe on Friday, June 26, 2020 - 05:15

I really wanted to like female siri, but unfortunately, she's got a few too many pronunciation quirks for my liking. I keep all the various English dialect voices in my roter, but almost never change my phone's voice for more than a few minutes. Alex sounds very natural to me, and seems to have fewer pronunciation quirks than the other voices. Plus, with the way he breathes, he sounds pretty life-like. I'd love a female voice with the same realistic characteristics as Alex, but have given up hope of that ever happening. It would be super cool if the Amazon Alexa voice could someday become a tts voice, but I know that's not even remotely realistic. So, for VO, I pretty much always use Alex, and for Siri, I use the Irish female siri voice; she's by far the most pleasant-sounding voice to my ear, at least for the purposes of using Siri. I hope this makes sense. LOL!.

By oberth on Sunday, July 26, 2020 - 05:15

I'm using Samantha, the other voices sounds weird somehow. Maybe because I've got used to her.

By Jo Billard on Sunday, July 26, 2020 - 05:15

I use Alex because he's easier for me to hear when I'm in a noisy environment, and the Australian male for Siri. A few weeks ago I wanted a change and tried Tom, but he lagged whenever I used BSI, and Samantha sounds really weird when she's echoing back characters. Both of them mispronounce a lot more words than Alex. I might try Daniel, see if I like him, but in the end I'll just go back to Alex. It's good to have a change once in a while.

By Kerry Fielding on Sunday, July 26, 2020 - 05:15

In reply to by Bingo Little

The voice is just so clear and pleasant to listen to. It's a shame apple won't open this up to 3rd party developers. The quality on the blindfold games, Voicedream reader and Easyreader is atrocious.

There is a pronunciation dictionary, isn't there? Not called that, but if you go to verbosity you're supposed to be able to change pronunciation. I haven't actually tried it out yet because I had trouble typing with that keyboard, but now I'm using BSI and will soon get a Bluetooth keyboard, so I'm going to experiment with it.

By gailisaiah on Sunday, July 26, 2020 - 05:15

I have always used Samantha enhanced for VO and I use Sirie's male voice. Some of the other voices are good but I always seem to go back to my favorites.

By Brian Giles on Sunday, July 26, 2020 - 05:15

For the moment I've gone back to Samantha compact since I just got a series 5 watch and that's the voice it uses for VO. You can also use the siri voices, which I like, but they have just enough reading quirks to be annoying with VO. Sometimes they'll hesitate between words and make me wonder if there's punctuation there, when in fact there isn't. It's too bad VO can't use the new neural TTS Siri voices, but I wonder if those might be generated in the cloud when you ask Siri something. People say they can tell the difference between them and the standard Siri voices, but I haven't been able to so far.

I'm kind of surprised that Apple didn't use Alex as a Siri voice option given that they talk about how he breathes making reading supposedly more natural. (I don't like that personally.)

All the voices VO can use have their quirks.

Fred is a nice tiny voice, and is probably the closest we'll ever get to Eloquence, Espeak, DecTalk, et Al. But it's also not very loud and makes certain sounds, like d's and t's sound more harsh, which is annoying until you get used to it.

The Nuance voices, like Samantha have weird pronunciation quirks, like saying MB as "milibars" instead of "megabytes." I wonder if this is because Apple is using an older version of the expressive voices since not all the voice choices are available on Apple devices i.e. the Nathan voice. Do the vocalizer voices that JAWS and NVDA use have the same pronunceaation oddities as the ones on the iPhone and the Mac?

It's always interesting when the mainstream gets a hold of something we've been using for years. Since the Samantha voice was the original Siri voice, people have figured out who the voice actor was who recorded it. There are a bunch of interviews with her on YouTube, and at least to me, in real life she sounds nothing like that default voice you get when you turn on VoiceOver on an iPhone.

By francis on Sunday, July 26, 2020 - 05:15

I like the siri voices. they are good and natraul sounding

i never used it that way personally, so i can't comment; but as a personal assistance, it is too perky. she is always happy and upbeat about everything, even you say you have cancer. and even if she says she is sorry to hear that, she actually sounds very happy. i don't know why she has to be perky, happy and upbeat all the time, to me, that's too one dimensional. if the computer can't adjust tone and expression according to context, make it neutral.

i actually prefer the original susan bennett voice. she is mostly neutral and efficient, like a good personal assistance should be.

I hate when a voice does not inflect on surten punctuations. for example, when I put a question simble, the vocalizer does not rise it's tone. it is sad. human voices can express the feeling, but these voices are not. eloquence, and NVDA does better job to express their feelings then siri, or vocalizer.

By roman on Sunday, July 26, 2020 - 05:15

The people from vocalizer are failing to make a human sounding voice. I do not think that increasing the sampling rate does make human. I am sorry to say, but it is not good.

By Jo Billard on Sunday, July 26, 2020 - 05:15

In reply to by Holger Fiallo

I think she needs to share.