Favorite voiceover voice

By Moses Gitari, 10 May, 2018

Forum
iOS and iPadOS

Hi y’all,
It’s always fun to ask this question.
Which is your favorite voiceover voice.
Having asked that question, Alex uses over 800mbs, does it mean he is the best sounding voiceover voice?
Cheers.

Options

Comments

By Sabrina on Sunday, June 3, 2018 - 05:47

Alex rocks. With that said I will go through my favourite voices.
I prefer Tessa, the South African voice, for English, but also use Daniel, UK english.
For swedish I use male Siri.
The thing I like with Tessa is that it has the same accent as I do.
Not sure what voice I use for spanish though. I am using the default.
I use Nora for Norwegian voice.

By gailisaiah on Sunday, June 3, 2018 - 05:47

Hi Moses and all, I use the good oldSamantha. And for Siri, I have American male.

By Ekaj on Sunday, June 3, 2018 - 05:47

I just got my first iPhone and have briefly checked out all the voices or at least most of them. But for now I only have Samantha and the new female Siri voice. It's cool that the Siri voices are also available for VO on the iPhone. That said, I will probably switch them around from time to time once I get help with authorizing my phone. I currently have Fred as the content voice on my Mac, and Samantha Compact for everything else.

By sockhopsinger on Sunday, June 3, 2018 - 05:47

I would use Alex for reading long documents, but sadly the voice seems to lock up a good bit and stops working. I don't know if that issue has been fixed in the latest iOS updates, but that is a real deal breaker for me. Currentl, I use Karen compact for reading.

By Kimbowen on Sunday, June 3, 2018 - 05:47

I normally use Alex, except when I’m reading books narrated bye women, then I switched to Samantha, enhanced, because it’s kind of weird reading a book with a female narrator using Alex‘s voice. Daniel, enhanced, is used for books set in England I love that we have so much variety with Voiceover because JAWS only had one voice, which was pitch shifted to create Grandma, Grandpa, Shelly, Reed, among others.

By Moses Gitari on Sunday, June 3, 2018 - 05:47

Thanks y’all,
My favorite is Ava. She sounds seductive and mature. For male voice, i use tom but not as often.

By That Blind Canuck on Sunday, June 3, 2018 - 05:47

I've had some Android friends tease me about using Samantha, they kept telling me that she sounded like a heavy smoker, but although I've tried other voices, I keep coming back to Samantha compact. I would much rather have the best lightest voice on my phone.

As for JAWS, Kimbowen, there are other voices you can download from Freedom Scientific's website, you're not stuck only using Eloquence. I used to use the one of the Real-Speak voices before, but for testing purposes, I tried Eloquence and have to admit, been using it ever since. Would be kind of cool if we could get Eloquence as a voice for VoiceOver though. Ah well, the closest match is Fred, but I am not that crazy about his voice. Prefer Eloquence default voice over Fred anyday.

By Jeff on Sunday, June 3, 2018 - 05:47

To me, Alex is overrated, but that's just my opinion. I'm a little surprised that Samantha is so popular. I never liked her voice on the VR Stream or early iPhones.

For Voiceover, I use and prefer Tom. I use the new female Siri voice for Siri. I really like the new Siri female voice and think of Siri as a female, so that's perfect for me. Since I use Tom for Voiceover, I can easily identify when Siri is talking to me or when it's Voiceover that I'm hearing.

By OldBear on Sunday, June 3, 2018 - 05:47

I use Samantha default because I'm used to that voice. I tried out the new Siri female voice and it bothers me at high speaking rates. I keep it at about 72.
Samantha, on the other hand, sounds fine to me at the high rate. I'm sure I would get used to most voices if I switched, though.

By George on Sunday, June 3, 2018 - 05:47

I always use the American female Siri Voice all of the time even though I am English and live in England how weird is that

By Kimbowen on Sunday, June 3, 2018 - 05:47

In reply to by That Blind Canuck

Oh yeah, thanks for reminding me. I forgot about the real speak voices instead of eloquence. In that case, I always used Samantha, she seems to be the go to voice for most people.

By techluver on Sunday, June 3, 2018 - 05:47

For english, i love alex. but for swedish, i love female siri.

By Holger Fiallo on Sunday, June 3, 2018 - 05:47

Tom is OK. Before I used alex, Samantha and keren. JAWS use naithon. I wish next time apple get his voice, since they got most of the voices in jaws.

By Ekaj on Sunday, June 3, 2018 - 05:47

Okay, I admit the subject is rather vague. But the mother of one of my former coworkers is actually named Siri. I've not met her, but it'd be cool if she was one of the voices too. Btw, I just attended another training session today for my iPhone and the guy showed me some more things. I think I will play around with the different voices over the weekend. I've noticed that the iPhone does not have separate settings for Content voice, Pitch and some others are missing. But then again I'm only a novice iOS user, so I might've missed something.

By Chuck Winstead on Sunday, June 3, 2018 - 05:47

Hi,
In my case I like Victoria on Mac. Kate would be a close second. Samantha Would also be another close second. For iOS I"m fine with the Samantha compact voice.
personally I do like the apple voices better than something like NVDA, JAWS, or even when I had Window Eyes. The Apple voices just sounds more human like and less robotic. sTill have a time or two when they are more robotic sounding, but over all more human sounding which makes it more appealing.
Chuck

By Moses Gitari on Sunday, June 3, 2018 - 05:47

I think Alex would be a great voiceover voice if apple do something about it. I think he is getting old. I tried him the other day and I realized that he is kinda whistling. I suppose apple should try to refine him and make him clearer in addition to his capacity to breath.
Finally, I’m surprised that no one has mentioned my favorite voiceover voice and I mean Ava. Samantha has clearly thrashed many voices. This is very interesting.
Cheers.

By TJT 2001 on Sunday, June 3, 2018 - 05:47

My preferred voice is Alex--I've been using it for over two years and, despite its quirks, I wouldn't change. If I had to pick my second favorite, it would have to be the compact version of Martha.

By Holger Fiallo on Sunday, June 3, 2018 - 05:47

In a far galaxy alexa was added to the voices of iPhone and all enjoy the apple force. I would loveto have Alexa for a voice.

By Justin on Sunday, June 3, 2018 - 05:47

Now that would be nice. On the Mac side, I've been using infoVox for a few years now. The happy voices are just hilarious! I mean, If you cap the first letter of some words and put an exclaim they at least Peter, yells some words and laughs a little, lol! Alex is great as well. I'm glad the nuance vocalizer voices are there too.

By TJT 2001 on Sunday, June 3, 2018 - 05:47

This is just wishing because none of this will ever happen. I'd love Eloquence, but something about it announcing phone calls doesn't seem quite right. If we got Alexa, I'd only want the US English voice because I'm not a big fan of the other English accents. But I'd prefer the new Google voices, especially the original US English female voice (the one you get by default with Google Home and Google Assistant).

By gregg on Sunday, June 3, 2018 - 05:47

I use Alex. It still locks up under IOS 11.3.1.

By Dawn 👩🏻‍🦯 on Sunday, June 3, 2018 - 05:47

I used to use Samantha Enhanced, but after new voices were introduced, I started playing with them all since I didn't think you could before. Now, I use Ava Enhanced. She sounds more human and less like a robot which makes reading a lot easier. I use the new siri voice for Siri. Ava might take up a bit of space, but for me at least, it's well worth it!

By Lielle ben simon on Sunday, June 3, 2018 - 05:47

Hello, my favorite voice is Alison, siri sounds to me very quite. For hebrew language i use Carmit voice, it sounds very clear but stronger more than other voices. for Jaws for windows i use the same voice that i have on my iPhone. To my nolage the voices for Jaws sounds beter, and more gentle from Apple.

By Devin on Sunday, June 3, 2018 - 05:47

I find Tessa to have the fewest audio artifacts between consonants. Plus I find the default American voices to be quite nasal, but that may be because I'm Canadian.

By Chrissy on Friday, May 3, 2019 - 05:47

I use Fred for everything!
I love Eloquence, DecTalk, and all such voices, so I was thrilled when they added Fred as an option. It really made all the difference, and is the reason I began using my phone as more than a phone. Before that, I disliked the voices so much that I never considered my phone useful for reading, etc. The robotic type voices are just easier to hear, can speak at a faster rate, and just seem more efficient, to me. And sighted people can't easily understand them. Long live Fred!
Also, I truly don't understand why Eloquence can't be used on the Iphone. It's an option for Android, and I did experiment with an Android phone for a few months, just to use as a book reader. It worked well until there was some change in Dropbox that made it tough to import files. I'm now a contented fan of VoiceDream, with Fred, of course.

By Zoe Victoria on Sunday, May 3, 2020 - 05:47

Most of the time I use Alex, but when I want to change things up I use Ava. Sometimes (although this is rare) I use Suzan when I'm reading things that I write because she sounds young and since I'm a bit young myself I think it's the most fitting.

By JC on Sunday, May 3, 2020 - 05:47

Hi all, Fred for me as well! I also use siri male (American)

By WellF on Sunday, May 3, 2020 - 05:47

I used American Siri female for a long time as my #1 voice for reading books in English, but lately I changed to Ava and I'm quite happy with her less artificial sounding compared to other common voices. American isn't my favorite accent, but I choose quality of speech above everything, and of course space saving.
I use Siri female for Portuguese, Spanish and Japanese, even I'm just starting to learn it.
On desktop, I use Ava for English, Fernanda for Portuguese and Francisca for Spanish.

By BlackCat on Sunday, May 3, 2020 - 05:47

Hi everyone
The Siri Australian female voice for now. If I am not mistaken? She has the least pronounciation issues of all the voices including the Nuance voices. The UK Siri male voice is not to bad either.

By Khushi on Sunday, May 3, 2020 - 05:47

since I got my IPhone in 2019, I've been using Siri female American. I tried using AVA but don't know why I switched back to good old Siri female. I'd love the new enhanced Siri Female voice as a VO voice.. I was able to notice the difference quickly and loved it.
though I'm an Indian.. sorry to those who like those voices.. but I hate the new Indian voices!
they are sooooo robotic! and it seems as if they are doing something they don't love.. I mean no feeling at all!
I've never used Alex and Fred.. may be I can give m a try after reading all the comments.. I used tom for a while but again switched back.. don't like Samantha.. for some reason it seems as if she has something in her mouth..
I don't know.. but when I watch some videos.. probably its because of old IOS or different nation.. Samantha sounds way to better. was she better in old IOS? before IOS 12?
:)

By Miss Pillows on Wednesday, February 3, 2021 - 05:47

I don’t really like any of them much in the way they read and their inflections but i kinda like Ava she’s got a quieter less yelly voice and the new American female voice is ok too except it’s bug city it quits on me in the middle of reading long text

By Cowboy on Wednesday, February 3, 2021 - 05:47

I still miss eloquence. That’s one thing I loved about my Windows phone and Mobile Speak. I traded up to the iPhone when the 3S came out and the default was Samantha. I eventually switched JAWS to Samantha as well. If I could go with Eloquence on the iPhone everything would use that.

By Andrew J Godwin on Wednesday, August 3, 2022 - 05:47

Samantha enhanced is actually much worse in my opinion than the standard Samantha voice, also known as Samantha compact. I don’t use windows/jaws, so I didn’t know that some jaws voices are on the iPhone as well. Interesting. Siri female American is actually in my opinion worse than series actual voice. The Siri voice for is the voice that I’m talking about. I don’t know what’s wrong, but on the iPads and other Apple products, Siri‘s voice sounds robotic, even after all of the new updates. The iPhone however does not experience this problem. Or at least you might think it doesn’t. Unfortunately, the iPhone voice for voice over settings also sounds kind of robotic. Maybe the reason why I am experiencing this is because my iPad is an iPad seventh generation, which as you know has the a 10 fusion chip, and I have an old MacBook Air 2017 which doesn’t even have Apple Silicon. Most likely, the non-robotic Siri voices require the neural engine to process. I’ll test it out using my grandfather‘s iPhone 8 and grandmother‘s iPhone 7. So after running a little bit of testing, I figured out that for some short requests, such as the time, the new and improved Siri voice actually works on my grandmother‘s phone. Remember, she has an iPhone 7. However, for long requests, only my grand father‘s iPhone 8 and my iPhone 12 were able to process these requests and have Siri say them in a much more human form. This is quite a bit of a shame, and it’s kind of annoying as well. Apple should put the Neural Engine on the Apple Watch and HomePods, this would allow for the more human sounding Siri voices.

By Logician on Tuesday, January 3, 2023 - 05:47

@blindcowboy : Eloquence is now available! In iOS 16 and the latest macOS. Pick 'Reed' to hear the familiar version.
I'm trying to pick which voices to install on my iPhone. And trying to identify which are the shiny new ones.
I had picked my favorite a while back, but I had to wipe, reinstall iOS and restore, and now the voices are all gone, and I can't find the one I had; as I recall it was a New Zealand voice, and there aren't any now. (There are 4 Australian ones though.)

I tried South Africa Siri voice 1. Not acceptable.