VoiceOver alternating between very fast and slow speech in MacOS Sonoma

By Rasgueo, 26 October, 2023

Forum
macOS and Mac Apps

Hey guys, I just updated from Ventura to Sonoma, and I am not sure if what I am encountering is a bug or if there's a way to fix it somehow. I tried looking around the forum but nothing pops out as useful.
So I'm using Eloquence as my default voice, and my rate is set to 80%. However, the speech rate goes down to 50% when reading certain words. For example, Eloquence is reading back this text to me with 50%, but when I go around the website it's back to my usual 80%.
Same thing with other apps. I went looking around in VO utilities and when I VO arrow left and right some things are being read normally and some slower. It's not consistent so far, or at least I can't find the consistency.
Another thing which might be of note, I tried to switch the default voice from Eloquence to something else through the rotor, and the fast speech is spoken by the new voice (tried with Samantha and Alex until now) however Eloquence is still speaking when VO slows down to 50%. So for example, I press alt tab and it will result in Samantha reading out Voice Utility with 80%, but when I let go VO slows down and Eloquence says Voice Utility Window.
Any help for this? It's really annoying.

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Comments

By SplendidFault on Tuesday, October 24, 2023 - 21:57

Hey,

It looks like you might have adjusted the speaking speed for certain things like menu items and attributes, which could be why you're hearing different speech rates in different situations.

To address this, open VoiceOver Utility, go to "Voices," and then interact with "Customised Language List." Choose "Edit," and expand the "Additional Voice Options" section. Check for any inconsistencies in the speech rate settings there.

Regards,
Sadik

By Rasgueo on Tuesday, October 24, 2023 - 21:57

Hello Sadik, what you described works. Thanks so much!
Is it possible to set it so that this configuration changes when I adjust my speech rate? It would be pretty annoying to have to do so every time I want to bump it up or down, and I don't remember this being an issue on Ventura, although admittedly it just worked so I've never needed to troubleshoot it in this way.
Anyway, thanks again!

By Brian on Friday, November 24, 2023 - 21:57

Any chance you setup an activity within VO Utility and forgot about it?

By SplendidFault on Friday, November 24, 2023 - 21:57

I'm glad it worked for you.

To the best of my knowledge, you shouldn't encounter any issues if you refrain from adjusting the voice parameters I mentioned earlier.

Regards,
Sadik