just a discussion on VoiceOver voices

We need more child voices. I loved Junior. I love superstar, but those are pretty much. The only ones we have unless you wanna go into eloquence and attempt to use Sandy and the only way you can get Sandy to sound halfway decent to go and take out the breath completely otherwise it sounds like a really scratchy messed up mess. So yeah cause I just think little kid voices are cute, so yeah that was my next. Thought. I was gonna add to this discussion because for the ones that are currently available and I really don’t know how many child sounding voices. Those are cute.

What about Noel, and Joelle?

Hey Brian, I think those are just higher pitch versions of Zoe. But yeah, I guess those are kind of child voices. You’re right. I kind of forgot about those actually. She probably download those to one of my devices at some point. The only reason I know that they’re kind of different versus Zoe is because if you play with the timber, you can get them to sound like Zoe.

With the US Siri voices there is a slider where you can choose between more inflection and a faster rate. I don't know if the faster rate option has any impact on Siri's inability to read single characters properly. Sadly, Apple never rolled this option out to other Siri regions so it's missing from UK Siri for example.

The single character slow-down thing never used to be there. I had one of the Siri voices on my phone and it was pretty good, although occasionally some of the inflection was a bit annoying. I only stopped using it because it started to take 2-3 seconds to say a single number or letter.

I also agree that Serena isn't great, but it's the only UK voice I get on with. I used to use Kate before realising Karen was much better. I'll try it again if they add a Kate Premium.

For those not using Windows, if you want to try the nice Microsoft voices you can use Edge and it has an option to read web content using those voices. I agree that Sonia is very good. (I've only tried this on the Mac, not sure if the option is available in iOS). But if I have a lot of web content to read I will often switch to Edge and do it there.

I agree, Karen is much better than Serena. I mean she’s Australian but I feel like a lot of her voice to me. Sounds a bit more British but hey it’s all good. She’s asking me either way. My computer can’t run Windows 11, so I’m not gonna be able to use it more Natural Microsoft voices. Plus I’d rather have the vocal voices anyway.

Regular Nikki requires a download now. In iOS 18, she was pre-installed. Only on my iPhone SE for some crazy reason I downloaded regular Nikki and she absolutely has no button whatsoever. She acts though she’s preinstalled. It’s driving me crazy. I don’t want her on my phone and I cannot delete her. I’ve tried resetting all settings. I tried just resetting the VoiceOver settings. I’ve tried restarting your phone. I have checked every iOS 26 update and I cannot delete her. Has anybody else been experiencing this issue with a Voice that refuses to delete? I don’t have this problem at all with my iPhone 15 running the exact software the same as the SE 2022, which is the latest one now the iOS 26.3. I don’t remember when I first saw this happen so that’s why I haven’t really known how to tell Apple because I don’t remember which iOS 26 to start happening to me if they get may have been in possibly like iOS 26.1 or something like that, but I’m not sure

I've been using Eloquence Reed since it was brought to the iPhone. I would love Dectalk. We can only hope.

Does anybody want that awful Arctic speech chip back? You know the one like in the old like 2000 old Braille like that yeah no thank you but just saying if we really wanna go that far back

No app... apparently, you'd think an ios app would carry over but no, it's apparently one step too far for ecosystem integration.

Well... that's just stupid. 🙁

DECTalk is available on GitHub, so someone that knew how to work with Apple's TTS API could submit it to the App Store for iOS/iPadOS/macOS. I'm not sure if the TTS API is available on watchOS, tvOS, and visionOS.
https://github.com/dectalk/dectalk

No, brian, this isn't about you. But it is about Brian.

Now, I'm one of these chaps who prioritises regional localisation. That means I insist on using british english (why don't they just call them England English?) voices. always have done and always will, where that option is available. so Perfect Paul and all that crew are off the table. don't get offended by that - Bingo just can't abide an american accent reading about cricket and rugby, talking about Gen zee instead of Gen Zed, and that sort of carry-on.

I would use Eloquence if it sounded like it does on Windows. I just can't get used to how it sounds on the iPhone. So that's also off the table, for now at least.

When first I got an iPhone in 2010, the UK English voice was Jane - a RealSpeak voice I believe. Apple also made her breathe in appropriate places. I actually thought she was more than half decent and I wouldn't be sorry to see her back; but then in about 2012 came the forced migration to Daniel - who also used to voice the announcements at King's Cross St Pancras undergraound station, incidentally. He was not too bad, and he still appears on my voice rotor, but I switched to what is now Siri voice 1 as soon as she became available with Voiceover. What used to annoy me about her, though, was she had a problem pronouncing are and our if you either typed those words or moved to them using the words setting in the rotor. She'd just remain silent as you passed over them. Not a deal-breaker, but an annoyance. bringing us to the present, my default voice is siri UK voice 3, which I think is marginally better than voice 1, all told. I actually like all four UK Siri voices, including voice 4, but voice 4 is a bit out of step with my personality - a bit too young and cool. Voice 3 also has its annoyances - it can't pronounce egg, or eggs! Try it, and you'll see what I mean. It also has an issue with its nines.

Now to bingo's wish list and this is where Brian comes in. Ivona brian is superb. He is my Voicedream default. I wish he could read everything to me. He would be accorded the place of honour as Bingo's default voice. Not only that, but there would be no need to go to any other, except perhaps Eloquence (as it sounds in Windows) for a bit of speed reading. So I'll have brian and Eloquence, please. You can keep your DecTalk and your Keynote gold.

And another thing: back in the day I did like the apollo speech synthesiser, whose software incarnation was Orpheus. I would have that too, for old time's sake.

My favorite voices were, as you said Michael, Samantha from way back when, Yes, Alicia, eloquence, except I wish they would fix the bug in eloquence bug regarding time 01-09 and 00 being o'clock. If I had the choose one, I would have to give it to eloquence, although I wish Braille N speak voices came back along with the franklin language master voices, although the speaker on the iphone could not handle those one-word Franklin voices for compact voices. Lol, maybe it is jus tme, but I also liked doubletalkas well to go with it.

i used to be focused on alex, as back in 2009, there was no eloquence. now there is, and i use to use reed. but now, i just use my personal voice. if something doesn't sound right using it, i just create a knew one.

I still have a language master. My language master has kind of a warm over the keynote gold voice, but it’s not like the full voice so it’s a little bit less quality. I feel like the phone kind of could handle those because like you said, they would just be a compact Voice. So yeah, we can bring back a lot of those voices. That’ll be awesome.

hi Bingo,

Have you tried using the pronunciation dictionary to edit the pronunciation of words that don't sound right by default while using any of the Siri voices with VoiceOver?

No, I haven't. But why should I need to go to those lenghts for eggs? I mean, eggs are eggs! As in bacon and eggs! Since when did eggs become frergs? that's an approximation of how it pronounces eggs. As for the nines, since when did nine become DeNine? surely we shouldn't have to fiddle about with pronunciation dictionaries just to talk about a dozen frergs costing deNinepence? answer yes or number.

Agree with you. Long live cats. Well at lease it can pronounce cats

To each their own, but I for one am happy to have the option to correct pronunciation mistakes with synthesized speech. 😛

I have never been successful with the pronunciation dictionary. I honestly just gave up on the whole feature because it never really does what I want to do. No Voice pronounce my last name properly at all. Trust me, nuts. Ironically the only voices that can actually pronounce my name properly or eloquent. I really don’t like the eloquent voices as I’ve mentioned before. So I just deal with it. I let the vocalizer voices continue to mispronounce my last name. I’ve never created a personal voice. I don’t know what my voice would sound like coming out of my phone to me. I think that would be sort of creepy for me to hear a voice that sounds like me coming out of my phone. I’ll just stick with good old Karen and Samantha whatever I feel like using them at the time. I have the enhanced and the premium downloaded to my iPhone 15 for Karen and I’m using the enhanced Samantha on my SE.

It never is able to say my name. Holger. The h is silent and g is different to say compare to the G in English. Long live cats. PS name is German.

Just curious here, but is your name pronounced similar to the coffee brand, "Folgers"? Where the GER portion is pronounced like,"jier"? Genuinely asking here, and I hope my example makes sense. Trying to spell out phonetics can be a pain in the backside.

G is similar to g in spanish. Wonderful lady friend sometimes call me folgers. She is nuts but that is for another story. Again the H is silent. Apple is doing it because they hate me. Long live cats.

Totally just asking out of curiosity, does Eloquence with the Community Dictionary enabled in iOS 26 pronounce your name any kind of correctly? It definitely is pronounced differently than JAWS with Eloquence.

I'll tell you what's wrong with personal voice: bloody US english! I can only create my personal voice using US English. That's more than a label. the system seems to think, notwithstanding efforts where I have tried deliberately to accentuate received pronunciation in english as spoken by, say, Margaret Thatcher, that I am still american. It desperately tries to americanise the way I pronounce my R's as a result, for an example. The upshot is something that sounds nothing like me at all.

Brian, I don't mind fixing things in the pronounciation dictionary. I hate it when Jaws goes on about Magdalen College, Oxford. everyone knows it's pronounced Maudlin, so I had to change that. The ironic thing is with siri voice 3, I haven't had to change that. It knows when I'm talking about Magdalen College as distinct from Mary Magdalen; but its eggs are scrambled.

Anyone else want Ivona brian on IOS, like I do? No votes for dear old Orpheus but I can understand that. I'd have Keynote Gold back too, just to relive the aggressive way in which it used to intone a question.

I can't think of anything I'd rather have less than my own voice coming out of my Mac telling me that Safari is not responding. (Shudder)

I feel your pain. Truly. Sadly, if you ever want another Ivona voice, you'll have to pray to the powers that be, that Amazon and Apple merge, since Amazon owns the intellectual property of Ivona. It's pretty much Alexa voice these days.
On a sidenote, Bingo, if your device is giving you a hard time about the way you pronounce your arse, perhaps stop trying to pronounce your arse on your device? 😁

This made me laugh. I Hate you and deeply resent my sense of humer!

Very good. The sort of witicism that only works with blindies. Just like only blindies would go on about having a tooter at university, perhaps a tooter who exercised undo influence over them.

"I own over 1,700 yards of paddy fields," he said, with a rye smile.

I have been using Nathan on my iPhone ever since it became available in iOS 16 and never looked back since.
iOS 15 I was using Siri voice 1 South Africa.
Anyone using Nathan now?

For Michael and Brian. No. It does not do so not even in my windows PC. I had not tried using Diego from Chile to see. The only person who was able to do so was my supervisor Bella. She knew bad words in Spanish and she also spoke Russian. Long live cats. PS. I did not name my cat after her.

Holger, I did not assume you named your cat after your supervisor. In fact, I assumed that your cat and your supervisor were one and the same.

Long live Tom swifties: "I own over 1,700 yards of Paddy fields," he said, with a rye smile.

Sometimes it felt like that. Both were pushy and demanding. The human does have a sexy voice which it made it hard get upset with her when she was a pain. Long live cats.

Your disambiguations incriminate you.

Excuse me!! Meaning? Long live kitties.

This is from Google.

Self-incrimination occurs when someone provides information, either intentionally or unintentionally, that links them to a crime.

This can include verbal admissions, social media posts, or actions, which can be used as evidence in court.

The U.S. Constitution's Fifth Amendment protects against being compelled to provide such information.

So in other words, stop incriminating yourself, and plead the 5th. 😃

OK< still not get it. Bella the cat and Bella the human similar yes, one did own me when she was alive the other does not. She is not even around also. the human. Regarding Holger. If you know Spanish you might be able to pronounce the name. I need to test this by using Diego but do not have the time or not willing to do so now. Long live cats.

Yeah I don't get it either, but I was trying to help you understand jim Pickens' comment.

We are so off-topic my favorite voices are right now and probably always will be Karen and Samantha unless Apple doesn’t make vocalizer available for some very sad reason. I would be very sad if Apple took away care and Samantha for me. My all-time favorites. Yes I have them on my computer and jaws same thing as being able to have them in my pocket with me. I make a little stories about them in my head and like pretend that they’re my friends and stuff like that. Look, I know it’s not real, but it’s a fun game that I like to play. I pretend that they’re friends and then they like met each other in college not Samantha was an exchange student in Australia she became friends with Karen, so yeah, like I know how weird that sounds saying it out loud in writing it here, but I figured it’s no more weird than any other kind of off-topic comments. At least I’m trying to keep mine on the topic of voices so yeah, I like to make stories that are my friends. I like to pretend that Samantha and Karen are my friends and their friends with each other.

Samantha sounds strange now. Got a nice lady friend with a wonderful voice to create a personal voice and I use her sometimes. Happy now!!! Long live cats.

That’s awesome that you have one of your friends do a personal voice for you. Yeah I know Samantha sounds different than she used to, but I still love her anyway. I didn’t have an iPhone back when they had iOS 3 and four. I didn’t get an iPhone until iOS 13.3 something. So I didn’t get to experience the older Samantha as a daily voice. I did hear her on one video about like Apple Accessibility at the very beginning of the time that they had voiceover for the phone, but that was the only time I’ve heard of Samantha. I do like her though she’s pretty awesome. I wasn’t referring to just your topics. I think there were a few people that were off-topic a little bit. So I’m not like you know upset with anybody or anything.

There is an old thread on here I made about the real life person behind the Samantha voice. She was on a news channel for an interview, talking about her voice as Siri. Remember, Siri used to use Samantha's voice more than a decade ago. Below are a couple of articles you may find interesting. One is a Wiki article on Susan Bennett who is the voice behind Samantha/Original Siri. The other is her short interview with CNN circa 2011. Enjoy. 🙂

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Bennett

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2bTymnb1uE

I just realised - I am still using Stephanie on my Watch. Apologies if this offends any Stephanie fans, but what a truly horrible voice that is. I just about get away with it on the watch as I've sped it up more than on my phone and maybe the speaker isn't as good, but maybe time for a change.