Which is your favorite VoiceOver voice for iOS and why?

By molly, 24 February, 2016

Forum
iOS and iPadOS

Hi. I just wanted to get some opinions on the different voices available to VoiceOver users in iOS 9. Personally I use the siri male enhanced British voice. It's absolutely perfect for me. But what voice do you guys use? Do you have a favorite?

Options

Comments

By Jeff on Tuesday, March 20, 2018 - 10:18

I think of Siri as a female and I really like the new Siri female voice, so I use that voice for Siri and Tom for Voiceover. I like using a different voice for Voiceover from the voice for Siri.

By Gordie on Tuesday, March 20, 2018 - 10:18

Hi. I actually like a lot of the voices for different reasons. I like Samantha because she is a classic voice and if you use her right, she doesn't sound so angry, as some people have said here. I will get more into that later on.

I also like the female Austrailian Siri because she sounds so sweet and lovely. If you play with her using VoiceOver, you could fanticizemake yourself believe she is a really nice person and that she cares about you and loves you, unconditionally.

I also like Tom and Ava for various reasons. I like Tom because of his time on NOAA Weather Radio and soon to be on Weatheradio Canada. Ava will also be a new voice on this service as well. Ava also is a good voice for reading things, much like Samantha and that is where all the voices shine the brightest.

As for Fred, he is the closest that we will come to Jaws. If you do your research, you may have heard him on the song Fiter Happier from the OK Computer album by Radiohead. If you are clammering for Stephen Hawking or even Eloquence, Fred is the closest will get to them.

By Sabrina on Monday, May 20, 2019 - 10:18

Mine is Tessa because she has the same accent as I am it is a very unique voice and is by far the best voice I have on this iPad. I always use it for my english suff.
On the Swedish language I use Klara because it is a very calm voice.

By Karok on Thursday, June 20, 2019 - 10:18

hi, i like the alison voice, but is ava a bit quiet? do like it though.

By Ekaj on Thursday, June 20, 2019 - 10:18

I agree with those of you who say voice preference is a subjective matter. I got my iPhone last year, and have been more or less switching between voices just for kicks. I like all of them, but currently am using Fred as he seems to be the smallest and I've got several 3rd-party apps on the device. Apple's new voice that they demonstrated a couple weeks ago at the WWDC keynote sounded very nice indeed. Kinda like the American female Siri voice that was recently introduced. Not Nickie but the other one. I'm looking forward to trying the new TTS out on both Mac and iPhone this coming fall! Eloquence would indeed be a welcome choice for me on iOS and/or Apple's other platforms, but if that cannot be done it's fine by me. I realize Apple has their limitations, as do other companies.

By roman on Saturday, June 20, 2020 - 10:18

I love every voices on my iPhone. I am using samantha right ow. Vocalizer is a very human sounding text to speach for sure, but it lags in a one, but very big job. it is to express the voice in difrent pungtuations. for example: some voices do not rise their voice when they have a question mark. and almost all of the voices lag the ebelity to explain their explaination marks.

Hey. I totally agree with you. apple should make a voice like Alex in the UK English as well. Because I love the United kingdom a lot, and the way they speek english, Wow.

By Missy Hoppe on Saturday, June 20, 2020 - 10:18

I really wanted to like female siri, but unfortunately, she's got a few too many pronunciation quirks for my liking. I keep all the various English dialect voices in my roter, but almost never change my phone's voice for more than a few minutes. Alex sounds very natural to me, and seems to have fewer pronunciation quirks than the other voices. Plus, with the way he breathes, he sounds pretty life-like. I'd love a female voice with the same realistic characteristics as Alex, but have given up hope of that ever happening. It would be super cool if the Amazon Alexa voice could someday become a tts voice, but I know that's not even remotely realistic. So, for VO, I pretty much always use Alex, and for Siri, I use the Irish female siri voice; she's by far the most pleasant-sounding voice to my ear, at least for the purposes of using Siri. I hope this makes sense. LOL!.

By oberth on Monday, July 20, 2020 - 10:18

I'm using Samantha, the other voices sounds weird somehow. Maybe because I've got used to her.

By Jo Billard on Monday, July 20, 2020 - 10:18

I use Alex because he's easier for me to hear when I'm in a noisy environment, and the Australian male for Siri. A few weeks ago I wanted a change and tried Tom, but he lagged whenever I used BSI, and Samantha sounds really weird when she's echoing back characters. Both of them mispronounce a lot more words than Alex. I might try Daniel, see if I like him, but in the end I'll just go back to Alex. It's good to have a change once in a while.

By gailisaiah on Monday, July 20, 2020 - 10:18

I have always used Samantha enhanced for VO and I use Sirie's male voice. Some of the other voices are good but I always seem to go back to my favorites.

By Brian Giles on Monday, July 20, 2020 - 10:18

For the moment I've gone back to Samantha compact since I just got a series 5 watch and that's the voice it uses for VO. You can also use the siri voices, which I like, but they have just enough reading quirks to be annoying with VO. Sometimes they'll hesitate between words and make me wonder if there's punctuation there, when in fact there isn't. It's too bad VO can't use the new neural TTS Siri voices, but I wonder if those might be generated in the cloud when you ask Siri something. People say they can tell the difference between them and the standard Siri voices, but I haven't been able to so far.

I'm kind of surprised that Apple didn't use Alex as a Siri voice option given that they talk about how he breathes making reading supposedly more natural. (I don't like that personally.)

All the voices VO can use have their quirks.

Fred is a nice tiny voice, and is probably the closest we'll ever get to Eloquence, Espeak, DecTalk, et Al. But it's also not very loud and makes certain sounds, like d's and t's sound more harsh, which is annoying until you get used to it.

The Nuance voices, like Samantha have weird pronunciation quirks, like saying MB as "milibars" instead of "megabytes." I wonder if this is because Apple is using an older version of the expressive voices since not all the voice choices are available on Apple devices i.e. the Nathan voice. Do the vocalizer voices that JAWS and NVDA use have the same pronunceaation oddities as the ones on the iPhone and the Mac?

It's always interesting when the mainstream gets a hold of something we've been using for years. Since the Samantha voice was the original Siri voice, people have figured out who the voice actor was who recorded it. There are a bunch of interviews with her on YouTube, and at least to me, in real life she sounds nothing like that default voice you get when you turn on VoiceOver on an iPhone.

By francis on Monday, July 20, 2020 - 10:18

I like the siri voices. they are good and natraul sounding

i never used it that way personally, so i can't comment; but as a personal assistance, it is too perky. she is always happy and upbeat about everything, even you say you have cancer. and even if she says she is sorry to hear that, she actually sounds very happy. i don't know why she has to be perky, happy and upbeat all the time, to me, that's too one dimensional. if the computer can't adjust tone and expression according to context, make it neutral.

i actually prefer the original susan bennett voice. she is mostly neutral and efficient, like a good personal assistance should be.

I hate when a voice does not inflect on surten punctuations. for example, when I put a question simble, the vocalizer does not rise it's tone. it is sad. human voices can express the feeling, but these voices are not. eloquence, and NVDA does better job to express their feelings then siri, or vocalizer.

By Jo Billard on Monday, July 20, 2020 - 10:18

In reply to by Holger Fiallo

I think she needs to share.

By roman on Monday, July 20, 2020 - 10:18

The people from vocalizer are failing to make a human sounding voice. I do not think that increasing the sampling rate does make human. I am sorry to say, but it is not good.