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Blind and Visually Impaired Community

Full History - 2022 - 05 - 25 - ID#uxhxa3
12
Best sounding voice for voiceover on iOS? (self.Blind)
submitted by ChipsAhoiMcCoy
I saw you can change the voices in the voiceover settings on iPhone and I was curious if you guys have experimented with any of the different voices? Siri as an option sounds really clear and clean but if you speed it up too fast it’s way harder to understand than the default Samantha voice where have you guys tested and what seems to be the perfect balance for you in terms of vocal clarity and works well at high speed? Thanks!
TechnicalPragmatist 7 points 1y ago
I use only alex. He’s the best and the most natural sounding, he even breathes. Seriously. Hahaha! Apple did a wonderful job. I couldn’t fathom ever liking alex but that’s the only voice I’d use. I consistently use alex on all apple devices. His voice grew on me. I can’t find a better one that reads more naturally and get’s most if not all intonation right. I tried all of the siri voices and just……. No….. sorry….. not…… quite….
pisces0387 2 points 1y ago
I'm totally in love with alex, but have switched to Ava for a while, just for a change. But I agree with you. The best tts I have ever used, and I wrote to apple accessibility a few weeks back, asking please, can we have alexandra, lol or a female voice using the alex technology. It's wonderful. Makes being blind not such a chore when you have lovely sounding voices to read for you 💚👍
TechnicalPragmatist 2 points 1y ago
That’s good to hear a lot of us love it glad to see another one of us alex friends. I see. I am never content when I change and switch back pretty fast I did that before. And I agree it’s not such a chore.


That would be cool but unfortunately I don’t know about that. Alex was a one time thing and apple only made the one voice I guess they can pick up the speech engine and project and make another voice or something. I don’t know how willing apple is though.
CloudyBeep 2 points 1y ago
Same.
TechnicalPragmatist 2 points 1y ago
Glad you agree alex fan club arise and assemble hahaha!
pisces0387 1 points 1y ago
had to switch back to Alex after reading this! 😂
TechnicalPragmatist 2 points 1y ago
Hahahahaha! :D I didn’t know I and my words had that much power. Hahhahaha!
teameadow719 4 points 1y ago
In English I prefer British female Siri. In Swedish I switch between Swedish female Siri and Klara.
problematic_coffee 3 points 1y ago
I'm British, so I prefer Daniel enhanced, but I don't use it at a massively high speed.
LilacRose32 3 points 1y ago
I’m also British and use the same one. 72 rate
Marconius 3 points 1y ago
My personal preference is either Alex or Samantha Enhanced for English. I'm also learning Italian in Duolingo right now and am still deciding which Enhanced Italian voice I prefer, but am leaning towards Alice.
Simply_Limeade 1 points 1y ago
Is Duolingo accessible? My wife uses it and I can't see it being very blind friendly. No pun intended.
Marconius 2 points 1y ago
It's decently accessible. It has some interface hiccups, but once you get the hang of it, you can start tooling along with a language. The only drawback I've had so far is trying anything that has a different alphabet like Chinese, Russian, or even Klingon, haha. It's hard to discern the characters when you have no glyph reference, at least it is for me especially when they get you to learn the new characters by sight in the app. I have some keyboard shortcuts set up so I can quickly type vowels with accents, plus you can use the autocorrect features of the language you are learning just by loading that particular keyboard. Duolingo switches between the keyboards automatically based on what you are doing in the lesson. The Fill in the Blanks questions and the Lightning Rounds are the only other things I can't get to work, but you can skip those and they aren't necessary.
Simply_Limeade 1 points 1y ago
Thanks for the response! I envy your persistence with it. Hopefully one day they'll consider us and make it more blind friendly.
Altie-McAltface 2 points 1y ago
I like Ralph. I want my computers to sound like computers.
slif5eepi8i8 1 points 8m ago
Haha 😂. Yup they should not be permitted to behave like humans. 😂
CosmicBunny97 2 points 1y ago
I like either Alex or Ava
Fridux 2 points 1y ago
I use the non-enhanced Samantha voice on all my devices, as it sounds way better than the enhanced Samantha voice, and is easier for me to understand than every other American English voice at higher speech rates.
Vash-Rein 1 points 7m ago
Starting to really like Alex. What I’m noticing is that there doesn’t seem to be any Bluetooth delay when using Alex and that’s a huge benefit.
SoapyRiley 1 points 1y ago
I like Nicky. Her voice is a good pitch when I’m not wearing my hearing aids. I don’t hear low or high pitches very well anymore. Some of the others sound better at slow speeds, but are awful sped up. Mine is at 77 for general navigation but if I’m reading something technical with tired eyes, I slow it down to 65.
AllHarlowsEve 1 points 1y ago
I'm American and tend to get headaches, so I prefer deeper, less shrill voices. I use Lee Enhanced, one of the deepest male voices.
EffectiveYak0 1 points 1y ago
I use Alex on macOS at about 450 to 500 words per minute. Alex sounds soft to me and helps me maintain focus if I need to read a lot of text through the day. The robotic voices I've tried tend to drain me way more quickly than Alex.
Mister-c2020 1 points 1y ago
My go to has been Samantha enhanced for over 10 years now. I don’t know why but that voice is just the best one!
rory-games 1 points 1y ago
I would either go alex or ava. Alex is more natural, but Ava more clearly pronounces things, which makes it better for higher speech rates sometimes. Either of those two.
DHamlinMusic 1 points 1y ago
I use US English Voice 3, Google needs to give them names lol, is running about 550 words per minute.
retrolental_morose 1 points 1y ago
On my first iPhone over a decade ago now, I'm pretty sure the UK voice was just Compact Serena and that was what you got. She got replaced by Daniel and I didn't like him, so I switched to Tessa and have stuck with her.

however, naturality isn't the most important metric to me; I want my tts voices to be comprehensible at high speed, not sounding like an audiobook. I still use Eloquence/IBMTTS on desktop and would use it on my phone for reading if I could.
pisces0387 1 points 1y ago
South african female Siri quite nice too if your preference is the SA voices
Do you find tessa good at inflections? exclamations I don't care about so much, but if a tts can't do questions well, I won't use it, it's the one thing that drives me nuts!!!
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