Also notice how it reads the word, "Off," when an option has an On/Off property.
To check this yourself, make sure you're using the Premium voice, go to Settings->General->Accessibility->VoiceOver and flick right until you hear the following: "VoiceOver speaks items on the screen." Notice how it reads the phrase "speaks items," strangely emphasizing the word "speaks." Flicking further right will move you to the option "Use pitch change" which is again badly read. When reading phrases and clauses its pitch gets badly altered for some words in the phrase, generating very odd pitch problems which make comprehending speech all the more difficult.
Second - and this is my major gripe, the Premium American English voice has serious intonation problems. So if these voices are to stay, their volume should be decreased a bit. When using the Premium voice, the equivalent Compact voice is also used to read deleted characters and heading names. You'll notice this if you compare it with Compact voices. The Premium voices have been prepared using a volume setting higher than the Compact voices, and that's mostly to blame for the crackle. To check this in action, just notice how it pronounces lowercase letters "f," "e" and "r" when typing. The first thing I noticed with the Premium American English voice is that it tends to crackle frequently. For instance, the Premium American English voice doesn't pronounce "purchases" as "per cases." That's pretty much all about it. And, last but not least, the Premium voices apparently have slightly better pronunciations. With the Compact voices sometimes "m" and "n" are announced so similarly that even my supposedly sensitive ears fail to tell which one is which. Also, the Premium voices make it easier for me to distinguish between "m" and "n" both in typing and in moving around character by character. This is especially evident on calls where it's easier to hear the audio though the bit rate tends to be reduced on calls regardless of the selected voice. The benefits of Premium voicesĪs far as the over-all audio clarity is concerned, the Premium voices use a higher bit rate. Here it's located to the right of the "Use pitch change" option. If you have it and it's set to "Off," you're using the Premium voice for your language. To make sure you have the Premium voice, go to Settings->General->Accessibility->Voiceover, flick right to see if you have the "Use compact voice" option. Now the point is that I don't like the Premium American English voice at all, but before moving any further let's get this straight: when I refer to Premium voices I primarily mean the American English Female voice, so the experience might be different with other Premium voices. Again, I can't tell why that didn't happen when I updated from V5.01 to V5.1.
Honestly, I was mistaken partly because I was pleased with the way the Compact voices were functioning.Īt any rate, as I was updating my iOS from V5.1 to V5.1.1, my 4S also downloaded the Premium voice for American English. I used to think that my 4S came with the Premium voices though I didn't have the "Use compact voice" option under Settings->General->Accessibility->VoiceOver - I was wrong. So I was looking forward to trying them as soon as I got my iPhone 4S. However, I was thrilled to know that it'll provide Premium voices as well as the previous ones which are now called Compact voices. When I heard the news of the release of iOS 5, I didn't own an iDevice.
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