Text To Speech - Chinese Language iOS vs English iOS

DavidMars

进士
I bought the Audio Pronunciation (male) some time ago. Today I compared the pronunciation on my iPhone running the current iOS against my Taiwan (working in China) teacher’s Pleco TTS pronunciation with no add on modules. My speech is ‘choppy’, perhaps as expected from the 11 MB download size. My teacher’s TTS is very smooth. She is running an older version of iOS on her iPhone but is running the iOS in Chinese. I looked at her phone and confirmed she has no Pleco add on modules at all. I have SImplified Chinese installed as my second choice under Preferred Language Order. It doesn’t seem to be giving me the TTS quality my teacher gets. Is my teacher getting the smooth text to speech because of the Chinese/Taiwanese OS? If I change my language to Chinese, Simplified do I get the smooth Text To Speech? Maybe that would be the motivation to make the switch. Or I could break down and buy a voice. Thanks. David Mars, in Dali, Yunnan for a month.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Check the system Settings app under Accessibility / Spoken Content / Voices / Chinese; if you go into the Taiwan voice "Mei-Jia" there should be an option to download an 'enhanced' version of that which will hopefully provide you smoother quality. (nothing to do with having a Chinese localized OS)
 

DavidMars

进士
Mike, I downloaded the Mei-Jia Enhanced as per your note, and set it as the default (with the check mark showing). It seems to sound exactly the same. I restarted Pleco. Still the same. Am I perhaps missing something, or is the difference not dramatic enough to be obvious? Thanks, David
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Hmm... maybe try downloading some other voices in that case? Also, Pleco is set to use traditional characters, right? (if it's set to simplified then you'd want to download the enhanced voice for "China Mainland" instead)
 

DavidMars

进士
Mike, my bad on the Mei-Jia. I have now downloaded Tian-Tian Enhanced on both devices, ensured it is the check marked voice, and tested it on both devices. No joy. Any further thoughts? Thanks, David
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Not sure what else to suggest in that case, I’m afraid - maybe she’s using one of the other system voices? Or maybe she does have one of our paid TTS add-ons and you just didn’t notice it? Or maybe the older version of iOS had one that sounds better to your ears?
 

DavidMars

进士
Mike, just FYI, I seem to have resolved the issue by using Sentence Audio / Voice / Apple Mandarin Female. The male voice is presumably the ‘low resolution’ one. Thanks. Cheers, David 大卫
 
Top