Changing The Premium voice of your IOS device

Submitted by Holly on 6 April, 2012 - 21:44

Posted in:

I don't know about you, but even after IOS 5 was released and they made Samantha sound better which is the U.S voice on all IOS devices, I have wanted a different voice. I tried some of the other voices such as british inglish, south african inglish, and Irish inglish. I didn't really like any of those voices either, so I decided I'd just stick with Samantha. Using the Applevis channel on Zello, I learned that you could change your preamium voice. I asked how it was done and got help doing it. My phone now uses the preamium voice of Karen which is the Austrailian voice. I like her a lot better then Samantha. She sounds more like a real person. For those of you who would like to know how to go about doing the same thing here's how:
1. Go into your settings app.
2. double tap general.
3. Double tap the international button.
4. Double tap language and change your language to British Inglish.
5. Double tap region format and change it to austrailia.
6. double tap Voice Control and change that to Inglish Austrailia.
7. Plug your IOS device in to AC Power and wait for the new voice to load. I hope this helps those of you who may be enterested in doing it. It does not effect Siri if you have an iPhone 4's or the latest iPad. It also doesn't effect your iTunes or appstore accounts and there is nothing new you have to learn. This just simply makes your phone sound much better!!

Comments

#1 Knew that for a long time

Submitted by KevanGC on 6 April, 2012 - 21:50.

I've known that ever since a couple days after I got iOS 5. I love non-compacted Daniel, and they should build a better way of changing the voice into iOS.

#2 Oh, well I'm really behind

Submitted by Holly on 6 April, 2012 - 21:54.

Oh, well I'm really behind then! Yes they should or at least give more voices to choose from. Like maybe eliquence or something. I don't see why they couldn't do that.

#3 Why not Eloquence

Submitted by KevanGC on 6 April, 2012 - 21:57.

Eloquence on iOS would be amazing. However it's only supported by 10 languages and Apple needs much more.

With Android, there are many voices you can choose from in the app store. However since Eloquence is closed source and not being developed anymore this sadly cannot be done.

#4 That's to bad. Could they

Submitted by Holly on 6 April, 2012 - 22:31.

That's to bad. Could they get voices from other sources though? Well ovbiously they can because they didn't come up with Samantha, i'm not sure about the others. I think in the next version of ios they should give us a few more voices to choose or at least somehow allow us to have multiple premium voices in the language roder.

#5 Language rotor?

Submitted by mehgcap on 6 April, 2012 - 23:03.

You also have the "language rotor", found in settings > general > accessibility > voiceOver > language rotor. Here you can enable the voices you want, then rotor to language at any point in iOS and swipe through the ones you enabled.

#6 Use the roter

Submitted by KevanGC on 6 April, 2012 - 23:06.

I use it. But what Holly means is that we should be able to include whatever premium voices in the roter as we want. Not just one.

#7 changing the premeium voices

Submitted by Isaac on 6 April, 2012 - 23:56.

they should add the voices like jill tom

#8 Good point but not possible

Submitted by KevanGC on 6 April, 2012 - 23:59.

We would all want Apple to get as many voices as they can. However voices take up space, and especially on small devices this wouldn't be a good thing.

#9 changing voice control does affect Siri

Submitted by mworkman on 7 April, 2012 - 00:14.

Holly wrote,

6. double tap Voice Control and change that to Inglish Austrailia.

followed by

It does not effect Siri if you have an iPhone 4's or the latest iPad.

Certainly affects Siri for me. Now this isn't necessarily going to be obvious every time you use Siri. I could still use it a bit even with Australian english selected, but there was a noticeable difference, and if you want to confirm it for sure, try switching Voice Control to French and then speaking english. If switching it to Australian english doesn't affect it, then switching it to French shouldn't affect it either, but it definitely does, which suggests that switching it to Australian english is similarly affecting Siri.

Fortunately, this step is not necessary in order to switch to the high quality Australian voice. You can keep the premium Australian voice and still select American english under voice control.

#10 apparently voice control does need to be changed

Submitted by mworkman on 7 April, 2012 - 01:41.

I said that you could switch voice control to American english and keep the premium Australian voice. I was wrong. It sticks around for a while but eventually reverts to the compact voice.

I'm pretty sure Siri is affected, though certainly not to the point that it becomes unusable. I'm just going to switch back to American english myself, as better Siri performance is worth more to me than a different premium voice.

#11 Concerning the space issue

Submitted by Peter Mahach on 7 April, 2012 - 05:39.

Well, there's an easy way they could resolve the issue. It's downloading the voices anyway, so this could be done Lion style. Voice over could have a manage voices button which would work like lions, with check boxes and preview buttons next to every voice. Then tapping the done button would download or delete anything that was changed. Or it could have a more open Android aproach, with developers being able to publish voices in the app store. If they opened up the API's there would be a market for this not only for blind people. Apps to read things or providing gps voice instructions could use them, ditto for Siri. IN that case there could be a speech button under settings>general to manage them.
The reason why Apple is not doing this is there is a security risk. If you turn an engine on in Android, you get a warning about the voice being able to get private information, which may be kept or sent off. Seeing how Apple is tightly sealing things off, that's probably why they didn't go for it. A shame, really.

#12 So why not just go for the

Submitted by Michael Hansen on 7 April, 2012 - 08:51.

So why not just go for the Lion-style voice manager and just keep the voices only provided by Apple?

#13 thanks

Submitted by mini me on 7 April, 2012 - 16:50.

Hey, thanks for that, it's good I can do that... now I can have one voice.. I like the austrailian one too.

I did like the english voice before they changed it to a male voice... but hey.. sad times...

#14 Sorry I told everyone wrong

Submitted by Holly on 8 April, 2012 - 09:38.

Sorry I told everyone wrong about the premium voice not effecting Siri! I was talking to some people on Zello about this and someone who has an iPhone 4's said that it didn't effect siri in any way. I don't have an iPhone 4's so I couldn't test this. Again, I'm sorry I told everyone wrong. I would have tested it if I had an iPhone 4's. Oh, and by the way, Happy Easter! :)

#15 deleting a premium voice

Submitted by John W. hess on 9 April, 2012 - 09:46.

Good morning. I have changed daniel to a premium voice and have a question. how do I get rid of a voice i added? The reason I ask is now that I have changed a voice and then gone back to the original Samantha voice I have a new button when typing messages asking to change the keyboard to UK english. Also, it is not possible to switch through premium voices with the language roter. I notice that if Daniel is loaded then Sam is compact and if sam is loaded then Daniel turns to compact. Thoughts? Thanks.

#16 In daily life I switch a lot

Submitted by Steenwolf on 9 April, 2012 - 14:06.

In daily life I switch a lot between Dutch and English and got thoroughly annoyed with the compact voices. They just sound too compressed and distorted to me. As a workaround I started using the Irish English voice, which has no compact version (at least on IOS). It mispronounces occasionally and does some other stuff that can be improved upon. I would really love it if Apple built in a pop up button with "monolingual, bilingual and trilingual" as options and got the premium voices according to that.
And regarding the keyboard being added, you can manage these in settings > general > keyboard or international. Both bring you to the same keyboard language list. In keyboard it's under "international versions" and under international it's "keyboards".

#17 How is this done on an iPad II?

Submitted by Katie P on 8 June, 2012 - 01:13.

While reading through this guide a few days ago, I excitedly followed the clear and concise prompts.

Unfortunatly, the iPad II doesn't appear to have a "Voice Controls" option.

Adjusting all other settings mentioned, then plugging in the device did not ever alter the premium voice.

Is there something am missing?

Does a lack of "Voice Control" setting mean the inability to adjust the premium voice in my case?

Thank you for any feedback.

Katie

#18 want more voices for voiceover!!!

Submitted by blind-harper on 21 January, 2013 - 15:45.

Why shouldn't we put major pressure on apple to provide more voices for IOS devices like Iphone. They do it for macs with companies like Cepstral and acapella group. I personally would want Ivona or Acapella voices as an option. We can use those voices in app development why can't we have them for an option different from default nuance for system operation.

#19 We shouldn't push them

Submitted by Emsters18 on 21 January, 2013 - 17:32.

I don't want to force my opinion on anyone, but I firmly believe that we shouldn't push Apple to make our lives perfect. It's enough that they gave us so much easy accessibility in the first place when they could have been like many other mainstream companies and ignored the blind community. I am extremely grateful to Apple for all of the amazing opportunities they have opened up for our future and I think it is very unreasonable to come whining to them simply because they haven't given you the perfect voice. In fact, in my opinion,there really can be no ideal voice when you are dealing with artificial speech. I do not want to imply that we should just sit back and be appreciative of everything without striving to make things better for the blind, but I strongly believe that there are certain areas such as this, where we can take a breath and reassess whether or not these trivial things are actually important in the long run.