Tom's voice quality in iOS 16

Maybe it is just different in iOS16 because it has the new premium voice that is available? The only thing I noticed on the last efw podcasts is that the voice is extremely high for demonstration purposes. Other than that, I haven't noticed any degradation to the Tom voice.

I complained during the beta, but it didn't get any traction. If you don't think it is different, try listening to the number 6, it sounds like sixsh.

From what I understand apple is now using an updated version of vocalizer and I agree it sounds bad. Samantha sounds like she has no teeth now and I've notice the ish problem with all vocalizer voices. For example dismiss is now dish mish amongst some other weird speach patterns. The only reason as to why I use the vocalizer voices over the other ones like alex is because when vocalizer speaks numbers like a phone number or a verification code it speaks them slow enough where I don't have to mess with the rotor and go character by character

Nuance or Cerence or who ever is responsible for these voices decided to make the voice files smaller which results in a reduction in quality. It's not Apple's problem, they just upgraded to the new version of the synthesizer which should be better but isn't. I don't understand the need to reduce file size. This isn't 2000 anymore where you had tiny little PDAs with extremely small amounts of RAM and storage.

I also noticed the size of Alex is a bit larger at 911.7 mb but I don't notice any different in his quality.

I was using Ava enhanced happily till IOS15, not that there were no quirks, but overall was smooth to the ear. But now in IOS16, the inflections are severely High in all the three versions, default, enhanced as well as premium.

Yes, I just upgraded to iOS 16.0 this weekend and noticed that Tom's voice is degraded in quality and pronunciation. I hate the way Tom speaks the word "button" and it's spoken so often. I'm using the enhanced voice, is the lower quality option any better?

Yes, sad but true.
I have Norwegian SIRI #1 as my default voice and it's definitely degraded.
This also goes for SIRI #2.
I also need English voices, so I have always used SIRI UK #1 and also #2 and SIRI US #1.
All voices is bad and a lot of words are pronounced weird.
This goes for both Norwegian and English.
The standard Norwegian Vocalizer voices on the iPhone have always been crap, so I was happy when Apple allowed VoiceOver to use the Norwegian SIRI voices a few years back.

They do when they are in windows and work well with jaws.

Regarding the Malcolm voice, it is still around. However, for some reason unknown, it was renamed to the Jamie voice.

However, Jamie can't pronounce forward for instance.
However, all voices in iOS 16 have quirks and annoyances though.
Hopefully it's possible to fix this in future versions of iOS 16.
I'm not a native speaker but how some words are pronounced is unbelievable.

Yes definitely. Agnes, Kathy, Victoria, Vicki... all of them are so small but they also sound so bad, so it's not really worth it. The voice I use a voice that's pretty big in storage, but at least it sounds good. And if they're already installed, such as novelties... forget it!—they're always bad.

Nicky And Ava don't say Dish mish.

At least Russian Milena hasn’t been broken.

However, as I noticed, her pronunciation dictionary breaks from time to time by itself. One day she says «Safari», and then she might say something like «Sofori» instad. But it’s not about iOS 16 update though.

But there is way more serious problem now. What, for God sake, happened to all the Chinese voices? Each of them now weights around thirty megabytes, and they all sound like every voice is in its «compact» version. Mandarin for the mainland China, Mandarin for Taiwan, Cantonese for Hong Kong, newly added Shanghainese and Mandarin dialects — situation is the same everywhere.

But anyway, I’m really glad that Apple added every available Vocalizer voices into its operating systems. Especially I’m happy about all the Slavic languages.

For some reason, when I think of the name "Jamie" as a VO voice, I think of a british version of Junior. Why this is is a mystery, but yeah, I liked the name Malcom better.

LOL. Or maybe just to add some degree of individuality. But whatever the case, I'm still just glad he sounds decent.

Hi all!
I am a multilingual user and I will tell that Russian voice Katya got extremely worse, apple simply put an ML version which reads English language as she wwould try to make a parody on a native English speaker as much as it can. It sounds it horrible, when I was testing a Beta version I was really upset because of that, it was one of my favorite Russian Cerence voices together with Uri.
Danil wrote that there is a bug that dictionaries sometimes work and sometimes don't. Like Russian voices read Safori as it was without dictionaries and sometimes read Safari as it's needed.
Actually, there is a new bug presented in iOS 16 Beta that was never fixed.
It consists in that when you switch languages in rotor, dictionaries aren't applied after you switch to language for example with Russian or Spanish. To make dictionaries start working with language you switched to you have to restart VoiceOver but it will only work until you switch to another language in rotor.
So as a result if you want to hear dictionaries applied for currently used VoiceOver language, turn VoiceOver off and back on after you switched to this language using rotor.
It's really noticeable with Russian Spanish when they read English words in a really strange way however I cannot notice it with French so I don't even know how to report this bug to Apple! If you have any idea please tell because now this dictionaries issue is somewhat inconvinient!
Thank you!

Please, please, please. Everyone who has noticed the horrible things that have been done to speech in iOS 16, write to accessibility@apple.com and tell them it is unacceptable. If they don't do something about it I may never be able to update any device I own. I have tried all the iOS 16 betas on my iPhone 8 and I desperately want to go back to iOS 15. No way could I put up with it on my current iPhone, iPad, or Mac. I have only really liked Allison enhanced, but now it sounds like someone who should be hospitalized for a respiratory disease. The size, 42 MB, has never changed. The sample recording of the voice sounds normal, but then when downloaded and used with VoiceOver it is bad. Every person I have let hear it says it sounds wrong. Even over the phone with someone who doesn't use that voice they could tell it was terrible. No way did Vocalizer do that much damage. Somehow iOS is distorting speech.

You are exactly right! This is why I was skeptical at first about these voice bugs. I seldom change voices, which means I usually just count on samples. They sound exactly the same. Wow! This is strange. A few voices I know that haven't changed are Nicky and Ava enhanced, and Zoe enhanced sounds quite nice, and so do Nathan and Evan.
HTH

How actually are enhanced and premium voices different? I don't notice anything practically.

Hi all. I might be an oposite from anyone else, but I find new Tom much better than the old one. I could never use it in iOS 15 and lower and now I can use it and do it for some hours. So I like the change.

Yes, me too!

I might try using him for a while, see if he can keep up with me when I use BSI.

When I first listened to a new Thomas Domville pod, I didn't even recognize him. But now, I like it better.

But I also agree too that some others are degraded. Ava default,Samantha Default and Enhanced, Alex... are worse now.

Samantha on the other hand, is definitely messed up.

Yes she is. I'm not sure though what apple can do about this other than downgrade back to the previous vocalizer version.

Before iOS 16 was released, I was super excited to find out that we were getting new voices. I was looking forward to Evan and Nathan in particular. Yes, Nathan has some pronunciation quirks in jaws; saw the dismish thing mentioned above, and that's all too common in jaws, along with several others, but I've learned to live with them for the most part. I heard the Evan voice on the Braille Note Touch Plus and really liked it, even though I no longer have the touch plus. Anyway, when I got the voices on my iPhone, I was very disappointed. I was disappointed by the way they pronounced button; difficult to describe, but it's super annoying. I think the deal breaker for me, though, was the way they can't even say iMessage. I'm hearing I mess edge. So, it looks like Alex is still going to be my voice of choice; not too much of a shocker since I've used him more or less exclusively since iOS 8, but still... I wonder if anything can be done to fix the voices. I understand that it might not be a problem that is within Apple's power to fix, but you'd think that Nuance, or whoever makes the voices these days, would be trying to improve the quality rather than making things worse to the point where voices have become unuseable.

so the reason Alex is bigger now, is because of feedback I submitted in one of the betas. he sounds like he did in macOS X Leopard, which is something I have personally wanted for a long time!

I used Serena until iOS 16 came out, and I also find that a lot of the voices have been degraded when premium or enhanced are used. The inflections are different, and the pitch changes a lot generally. I am using the Jaime voice, and it’s lowest form, because I find when I use him in advanced or premium, there are just some odd quirks. He doesn’t read as evenly.

I started to revise my German actively and noticed that new German voices for iOS which are Petra and Victor aren't good, because they try to read English as English when it's not needed. I am afraid that German reading can be worse because of that. I found that Victor compact's variation reads umlauts in a really strange way, like he adds e sound at the end of each pronunciation of it

And I thought Petra and Viktor not on apple sounded good. I usually don't like it when people complain about Apple too much on the forum, but I think lots of people wanted new voices, and Apple just put them there, with out worrying if ,they sounded good. Even innocent Noelle sounds scratchier in real life then did in her sample, and Zoe enhanced is pretty good, though she does sound a little strained.

It looks like our friend here has discovered that this is not an Apple problem, more like a Nuance problem. I'd say, they were probably trying something new that affected the voices, and both Apple and Google jumped for the change, and now that's why the voices are degraded on both platforms. Now, maybe to just get intouch with Nuance and explain the problem to them, see what they can do.

When I updated my iPad to iOS 17 beta back in July, some of you guys said that a few voices has been saying button awkwardly well in the beta software, It was saying button awkwardly on all voices, but until then when September came around,
the original fix all the voices, except left behind with some bugs Voiceover has a tiny lower pitch rate and then all the Siri voices except for Siri voice five but the rest are saying button just like some of these voices in iOS 16 and not to mention it’s very annoying because I don’t like the way it says button Even the pitch rate.
50%, is normal but the bug made it sound like lower.
I told Apple this like already like four times in a row two times in August one time in October and then the fourth time when I was running on iOS 17.2 beta four back in late November or early December. and yet no changes have happened.
If I was you, you must well look for an older iPad, like generation, five, four, three, two and the iPad mini.
iOS 17 made voiceover a lot bad for what I’ve witnessed