Missing Some Voices

By Ekaj, 29 January, 2014

Forum
macOS and Mac Apps
Hey everyone. This isn't necessarily a problem for me, but merely a curious bug perhaps? I've been going through all the free voices available for my Mac, and trying them out. These include the ones available from Nuance, or whatever they're calling themselves now. I seem to be missing Sangeeta and Emily. I think those are the only 2 that have gone missing, but there may be more. I've checked everywhere in the Voices tab of the Speech category in the Voiceover Utility, but can't find them. When I say Emily I'm referring to the British-English voice, not the French one. Again this hasn't presented a problem, but if someone could shed some light on this I'd appreciate it. I was at my parents' house over the weekend, and a sister of mine helped me install all necessary software updates. I'm going to check for more in a bit but thought I'd post here first.

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By Isaac Hebert (not verified) on Monday, January 27, 2014 - 00:22

Check the system preferences then dictation and speech then text to speech and then under system voice choose customize and check if the check boxes for the voices you are missing are checked.

By Ekaj on Monday, January 27, 2014 - 00:22

I checked under Dictation preferences tab but still don't see Sangeeta or Emily. Oh well, I like the others. Perhaps Sangeeta and Emily will be in a future update or something.

Hi, have you tried typing in the search field of the VO Utility? Once here, try typing the word "english" without the quotes in the search box and see if that can bring up your missing voices that you are seeking. Good luck!

By Greg T Kelchner on Monday, January 27, 2014 - 00:22

Jake, I know this doesn't answer your original question, but I would just like to let you know that you can perform software updates yourself with out sited assistance. If you are performing software updates specific to built in software on your Mac, this can be accomplished by doing a VO plus M to get to the menu bar. the first menu you should be on is the Apple Menu Arrow down until you hear software update and VO space on that. This will present a window including an HTML content displaying all available software updates. You have the option to instal all of the updates at once or instal only those updates you feel are important. You can also view descriptions of what changes come with each update. If you are updating your operating system (for example from Mountain Lion 10.8 to Mavericks 10.9) this is also accessible. After downloading the new OS from the app store you will go through some license agreements and the like and when it is time for the actual process of updating to occur your computer will restart in recovery mode. Once in recovery mode you can use command F5 to turn on VoiceOver and follow the on screen instructions. In case you didn't know Command F5 can be used to toggle Voiceover on and off from anywhere in the system. If you are upgrading the currant operating system to a new version of itself (for example Mavericks 10.9 to 10.9.01) recovery mode is not an issue and you would complete the update according to the first process I described via the Apple menu. I sincerely hope this helps and I hope I am not coming off as patronizing in anyway. I just thought I would throw this information out there incase you were unaware. I thought I remembered reading somewhere that you were new to the Mac but I could be wrong. Hope this helps, Greg

By Ekaj on Monday, January 27, 2014 - 00:22

Thanks guys. I did actually do a search but those 2 voices are nowhere to be found. Regarding the software updates, the reason they weren't working for me before was that my parents' credit card information had to be submitted. Yes, I am still on their account but I don't want to go into detail about this. I'm not underage though, believe me. I just had a birthday about a week ago and am now 40. But my sisters tell me that from now on, I will be able to install these updates myself. I checked and the whole process does indeed appear to be accessible. I am learning stuff I didn't know before, so thanks to everybody on this site!

By Esther on Tuesday, May 27, 2014 - 00:22

Jake, if you are comparing the voices that were available for download before Mavericks, there are indeed some voices that are no longer available, as well as a number of new voices that are available in each language. The voices that are no longer available for download under Mavericks include Sangeeta and the British English voice, Emily, that you list as being missing. If you are still running an earlier version of the operating system, such as Lion (Mac OS X 10.7), when these voices first became available, or Mountain Lion, you may still be able to download and use these voices.

The difference in available voices under Mavericks is more evident for some other languages, like Arabic, Hungarian, Greek, Norwegian, or Finnish, where the only available voice or voices completely changed. I believe this is related to which voices Nuance is willing to currently support and continue to support in the latests versions of both the Mac and iOS operating systems. There are about two dozen voices in various languages that are no longer downloadable under Mavericks, so this change is noticeable for people who use voices in multiple languages, and has been discussed on some of the Mac lists, like this recent thread about voice changes after the Mavericks upgrade on the Macvisionaries list.

I've linked you to the Mail Archive post for the start of the thread. The Mail Archive supports access key navigation in web browsers, so if you are reading in Safari press Control+n to navigate to the next post in the thread and Control+p to naviagate to the previous post in the thread. Other web browser/operating systems should replace the Control key with the appropriate access key combination for that platform (e.g., use Alt+n and Alt+p in Internet Explorer). To summarize, it may be possible to move over copies of the missing voices and use them under Mavericks if you have access to an older installation of the operating system with the downloaded voices, and are comfortable working the Terminal command line and also understand the organization of System files, but this is probably not something you want to try as a relatively new user. Another post you might want to read is the AppleVis forum discussion post Explanation to all of you who are confused about the voices in iOS 7.  While that post is about iOS 7, one of the issues is that Apple has been merging iOS and the Mac OS into a common interface.  My guess is that some of the Voice changes come from what Nuance is willing to keep supporting under Mac OS, as well.  

Before Lion, Mac users who used voices in other languages purchased these voices, generally from Assistiveware, who marketed the Acapela group's voices as Infovox/iVox voices. Assistiveware put a lot of extra effort into making sure these voices worked stably with VoiceOver as system voices.  Because of VoiceOver's integration throughout the Mac operating system, stability in using voices for generall operations, as opposed to just text to speech reading purposes, is a lot more difficult to achieve.  The experience of trying to use other commercial TTS voices from Cepstral or Cereproc, was generally that they would make VoiceOver crash or hang, and so VoiceOver users eventually disabled them.  I don't know of any extensive testing of other paid third-party voice options since Lion that would point to good, stable voices for VoiceOver without additional evidence that the manufacturer was willing to work on and support integration with VoiceOver on the Mac and in iOS.

HTH.  Esther