In the beginning, I sometimes felt that Henry's delivery clashed with the mood of a scene. As I listened to him more, I think I got used to it, though. It no longer sounds cheerful to me, but just like the way he talks.
I read mostly on an iPad. Tom, the voice I linked at the end of the post, is an Apple voice. Apple's accessibility settings include an interface for correcting its voices' pronunciations, which is a good feature that Speechify lacks. (If you search Apple's Settings for "pronunciation" you should find it.) The Speechify voices are definitely more natural, though, and understand punctuation better. There are also some Speechify voices labeled "AI Enhanced" that try to adjust their delivery to the meaning of the text. I don't like those because they sometimes get it jarringly wrong, but I expect they will improve with time.
After a lot of time spent listening to computers read, my mind does supply a lot of the missing expression and sometimes even character voices. If you think about it, when you read visually you are just absorbing a stream of words without any color to them, and your mind adds it. If you get used to absorbing a colorless stream of words auditorily, you can learn to do the same thing. For me it's become seamless enough that I sometimes feel as if I hear the computer talking like a certain character or otherwise adding color to its reading that it can't possibly be.
(If you want to try Speechify, you can find it in the App Store. It has a pretty high subscription fee due after the free trial, and I don't know if that would be worth it to you. You could test it out, though.)
I didn’t find the “pronunciation” setting on the iPad program all that helpful. I was able to teach it to pronounce “Waverly” but I never was successful in getting it to pronounce “Illya” correctly. And a lot of the mispronounced words are just because the selected voice runs words together or cuts them off oddly, which varies from voice to voice and isn’t really a problem that can be fixed by “correcting” the pronunciation.
I also got really frustrated when I spent a lot of time and hard drive space downloading the enhanced version of a voice I liked (it was called Nathan). But every time I select it - snd despite the fact it’s downloaded and selecfed - when I try to use it, the program substitutes a mechanical female voice.
Yes, the highest quality version of Nathan was buggy. I had the same issue. They have since removed it altogether.
As far as the pronunciation feature goes, you might try again. The tool that allows you to speak the pronunciation you want and have it transcribed phonetically has finally been fixed. (Due partly to my own complaints, I suspect.)
In the end, though, TTS tools only work for people for whom visual reading is hard enough to make the various frustrations worth it. I’ve been in that group for a long time. As the technology improves and the frustrations shrink, the group is growing to include more and more people. Maybe it doesn’t yet include you, though.
Yes, the highest quality version of Nathan was buggy. I had the same issue. They have since removed it altogether.
Unfortunately, they won’t allow me to delete it off my device, even though it’s completely non-functional. Using “edit” I can delete the smaller unenhanced Nathan file but not the big enhanced one.
I tried downloading the enhanced Tom, but when I select it, it sounds like the clunky unenhanced Tom. The only enhanced voice I’ve been able to get to work properly is the UK Daniel … which isn’t a bad voice, honestly, but which sounds kind of odd to me when playing MFU. But maybe I’d get used to it if I used if long enough.
Hm. That does sound like a high dose of frustration.
It sounds like, like me, you prefer male voices. I’ve just been experimenting with the Siri voices. I’d discounted them in the past, but they are actually quite natural, if maybe a bit perky. You might want to try out US Siri Voice 1 and see what you think.
I probably wouldn’t care whether the voice was male or female for listening to something like a news article. What I’ve mostly tried to listen to with the text to voice program, though, is MFU fanfiction, and that does sound better to me in a male voice, probably because it’s almost always written in the point of view of a male character. But I suppose if I found a really good female voice it might be better than a poor male one.
And maybe the technology will continue to improve as time goes on. I get frustrated by the voices not pausing at punctuation points or paragraph breaks and the lack of inflection in dialogue, but for the most part the technology isn’t “there” yet.
In the beginning, I sometimes felt that Henry's delivery clashed with the mood of a scene. As I listened to him more, I think I got used to it, though. It no longer sounds cheerful to me, but just like the way he talks.
I read mostly on an iPad. Tom, the voice I linked at the end of the post, is an Apple voice. Apple's accessibility settings include an interface for correcting its voices' pronunciations, which is a good feature that Speechify lacks. (If you search Apple's Settings for "pronunciation" you should find it.) The Speechify voices are definitely more natural, though, and understand punctuation better. There are also some Speechify voices labeled "AI Enhanced" that try to adjust their delivery to the meaning of the text. I don't like those because they sometimes get it jarringly wrong, but I expect they will improve with time.
After a lot of time spent listening to computers read, my mind does supply a lot of the missing expression and sometimes even character voices. If you think about it, when you read visually you are just absorbing a stream of words without any color to them, and your mind adds it. If you get used to absorbing a colorless stream of words auditorily, you can learn to do the same thing. For me it's become seamless enough that I sometimes feel as if I hear the computer talking like a certain character or otherwise adding color to its reading that it can't possibly be.
(If you want to try Speechify, you can find it in the App Store. It has a pretty high subscription fee due after the free trial, and I don't know if that would be worth it to you. You could test it out, though.)
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I also got really frustrated when I spent a lot of time and hard drive space downloading the enhanced version of a voice I liked (it was called Nathan). But every time I select it - snd despite the fact it’s downloaded and selecfed - when I try to use it, the program substitutes a mechanical female voice.
Reply
Yes, the highest quality version of Nathan was buggy. I had the same issue. They have since removed it altogether.
As far as the pronunciation feature goes, you might try again. The tool that allows you to speak the pronunciation you want and have it transcribed phonetically has finally been fixed. (Due partly to my own complaints, I suspect.)
In the end, though, TTS tools only work for people for whom visual reading is hard enough to make the various frustrations worth it. I’ve been in that group for a long time. As the technology improves and the frustrations shrink, the group is growing to include more and more people. Maybe it doesn’t yet include you, though.
Reply
Unfortunately, they won’t allow me to delete it off my device, even though it’s completely non-functional. Using “edit” I can delete the smaller unenhanced Nathan file but not the big enhanced one.
I tried downloading the enhanced Tom, but when I select it, it sounds like the clunky unenhanced Tom. The only enhanced voice I’ve been able to get to work properly is the UK Daniel … which isn’t a bad voice, honestly, but which sounds kind of odd to me when playing MFU. But maybe I’d get used to it if I used if long enough.
Reply
Hm. That does sound like a high dose of frustration.
It sounds like, like me, you prefer male voices. I’ve just been experimenting with the Siri voices. I’d discounted them in the past, but they are actually quite natural, if maybe a bit perky. You might want to try out US Siri Voice 1 and see what you think.
Reply
I probably wouldn’t care whether the voice was male or female for listening to something like a news article. What I’ve mostly tried to listen to with the text to voice program, though, is MFU fanfiction, and that does sound better to me in a male voice, probably because it’s almost always written in the point of view of a male character. But I suppose if I found a really good female voice it might be better than a poor male one.
And maybe the technology will continue to improve as time goes on. I get frustrated by the voices not pausing at punctuation points or paragraph breaks and the lack of inflection in dialogue, but for the most part the technology isn’t “there” yet.
Reply
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