I wanted to post another discussion question here, because I always have a lot of fun with these and hearing different perspectives.
What is your current VoiceOver speaking rate? Was it always that particular rate, or did you work your way up?
I always had mine at 65, but accidentally changed it to 70 percent like 10 minutes ago and actually prefer it. I feel like I can adjust pretty quickly, though I don't think I'll ever be able to crank it up to 100. Maybe 75 at most.
I can't wait to see these answers!
Comments
55
My is at 55. Alicia your number is to high and probably difficult to understand. 50 to slow and the perfect number is 55. Long live cats.
re: 55
I actually surprisingly understand it just fine! Maybe because I already listen to audiobooks pretty fast so I'm used to it.
My speaking rate never goes past 50%
I never put my speaking right past 50% of my brain can’t processing anything faster.
Depends on voice/situation
These days I primarily use default Samantha on my iPhone. She is currently at 65%, though I have hacker at 70% before. The rare times I use eloquence on iOS, I crank that up pretty high. Somewhere between 80 and 90. Though to be fair I do not use eloquence on my iPhone very often. I mainly will use that on my laptop, and only when I am dealing with source code. Other times I also have Samantha high premium or high-quality or whatever it's called on my PC laptop. Don't remember exactly what the number is, but it's equivalent to 65 on my iPhone.
I'm using Eloquence Reed at 70%
Hi,
I'm a huge fan of Eloquence. My favorite voice is Reed & I have him at a speaking rate of 70%, which is perfect for me.
Me to I Use Reed
Me too. I like using Reed, sinse I'm used to hearing it on JAWS. I have it set to 80% and I have the Rate Multiplier set to 115%. I'm the only one that understands what is saying.
One Thing To Know
One thing to know about this is that if I use VoiceOver at a faster rate, is that it drains my battery.
The vocalizer voice is in a PC or premium high
The vocalizer voices on the PC or premium high or compact. That’s interesting that there’s somebody on here who has a bad drainage when the speaking rate is faster. Maybe it takes more battery power to make it speak faster? I’m not really sure why that would be. But that’s interesting.
My speech rate for Alex and eloquence Reed
When using Alex, I prefer speech rate at about 65%, 70 at the highest. Using the eloquence, reed voice, I like it at about 75%.
50%, but.
Technically, 50%, more practically, 900wpm, since espeak has its own rate controls in the app. For reference, that's about equivalent to espeak on nvda with rateboost on and a rate of 75.
re: battery drainage
Interesting that someone experiences battery drain when it's at a higher rate. I wonder why that is.
Voice Rate
Samantha, 85
All devices
Watch, iPad and phone 55. Voice Tom. Long live gatas.
My devices
On my devices, I've set it about 60%.
Daniel Advanced for the win
I have Daniel advanced at 100%. Whenever I've experimented with eloquence, I've managed to get it to 85 - 90% before I couldn't understand it.
I'm not a massive fan of eloquence though really because I prefer the voice to be somewhat expressive and eloquence gets on my nerves quickly.
This is, of course, a matter of preference.
voices
In my phone for mail, have Alison, music eva, kindle, Daniel, and message had samantha. Deleted Sam in message because got 2 voices, Sam and Tom. Long live cats.
100%
I’m max it out. I need a lot of information very quickly. I don’t have a clue how people can stand using their devices at 55%. That means they’re getting information at a snails pace.
Everybody has a reason for what they do. Even if I’m not always aware of it.
100 percent speed
It absolutely amazes me that people can actually understand it at 100 percent. I don't think I'll ever get there.
Voice Speed
As a teacher of the Visually Impaired, I would sneak in and increase student's rate. I felt it would make them more productive in the long run.
Chad
Glad you were never my teacher. My hearing and ability to listen affect my ability to understand. Unless you did it with my consentthat would be different. Long live cats.
Alicia Krage
It takes time and a little practice. Just a gradual increase over time. There is never a rush. Just a willingness to try and stay in discomfort for a little while.
Speech Rate
I use Samantha at 100% and have done so for many years, probably since junior high if not earlier. For Eloquence Reed, I can understand it well at 85%. When I’m using eSpeak, mostly on NVDA and on Linux, I set it to 900 words per minute and I can understand it. If I am converting books to audio I would use 600 because it is hard to listen to articles and books at 900. A long time ago I just increased the speech rate gradually over time until it became hard to understand or reached the maximum, and whenever I start using a new TTS I do the same. It seems like eSpeak can be understood the fastest, followed by synthesizers like eloquence and TGSpeechBox (which has been getting better in this regard), followed by natural voices like Vocalizer and Microsoft’s new natural voices.
eloquence at 75
I've experimented with Eloquence at 75. I can understand it, but it's not something i'd want to listen to regularly lol. I think 70 is my sweet spot.
I love these kind of personal preference questions
I love these kinds of personal preference questions. I have tried to increase the speaking rate of voices and it’s just something that I physically get in pain doing. I’ve literally gotten headaches trying to process of way faster so I just keep everything at 50% Samantha enhance on my iPhone SE and Karen premium on my iPhone 15 and I’ve even used Karen enhance on the iPhone 15 sometimes and regular Karen but I still have to keep both of them at 50% as well. I’ve also switched to regular Samantha on my iPhone SE sometimes but I still have to keep her at 50% as well. Does it matter how long I’ve been using synthesize speech which for me has been all my life as I’ve been totally blind since birth I still was never able to listen to fast speech. Even when I used to have a computer with the keynote gold Voice and I used to have a bro like 2000 I could never put the speaking right up really high for that either. I would never want the voice from the barrel light back though that one’s awful. Everybody has different ways their brains can process information so I think that’s why there’s so many different options for speaking rates. Has anybody ever played around with the pitch in the timber of the voices? I don’t really do that anymore because it seems like the higher quality versions of the voices such as either the enhanced or premium don’t really do well when you change the pictures. It’s like they can’t handle it. There’s almost like a distortion that happens. So I just keep everything at their default speaking right in pitch in timber. I played around debate with the timber sometimes, but then I just reset everything to default.