Help me keep my sanity

[BlindSurvivor]

Greetings all,

I am new here, and mostly a newb when it comes to Android. I am blind so I use my S7 active with text to speech and the voice assistant on. This may seem minor to most of you, but for someone like myself who uses it all day... the Stock voices are Timmy and seriously annoying.
When I first set up my S6 Edge, I received a prompt to download a file called:

SamsungTTS HD US English

The "TTS" in the name indicated to me that it was a voice file, so I told the prompt yes. After the file had completed downloading, the voice on my phone change to a very acceptable voice that was easy to listen to. It also offered accurate pronunciation of letters as I was typing.
That prompt never came up on this S7. I looked through the Play Store, the Amazon App area, and the Galaxy apps app on my phone.. With no luck. So I am now stuck with the stock voices, and it's threatening to take my sanity. Can anyone out there direct me to any enhance or high-quality voices for the Samsung or Google Text-to-Speech engine? I cannot even find the Ivona HQ app for those voices.
Thank you in advance for your assistance and may God bless!

 

[nahoku]

First off, I don't own a S7, so I don't know what it's capabilities are. That said, there should be an option in Google Text to Speech engine where you can download or install voice data

Ivona HQ doesn't appear to be on Playstore anymore. However, it's still available on APKPure.co. Many people warn against downloading apps from 3rd party websites, but I've found APKPure to not give me any problems. Not sure if it'll work on your OS or phone. Use at your own risk. EDIT: Note, I haven't tested this app.

https://apkpure.co/developer/ivona-text-to-speech/

Here's the Ivona website. Looks like they may want you to subscribe to use their voices now. I haven't read through the site, so you might peruse it to see how to purchase or get voices. You could also contact them if needed.

https://www.ivona.com/us/

And here is a reddit topic on Ivona HQ... lots of links included

https://www.reddit.com/r/AndroidQue..._ivona_text_to_speech_become_unavailable_for/

Good luck! I hope you get it going.

 

[jimd1050]

Greetings all,

I am new here, and mostly a newb when it comes to Android. I am blind so I use my S7 active with text to speech and the voice assistant on. This may seem minor to most of you, but for someone like myself who uses it all day... the Stock voices are Timmy and seriously annoying.
When I first set up my S6 Edge, I received a prompt to download a file called:

SamsungTTS HD US English

The "TTS" in the name indicated to me that it was a voice file, so I told the prompt yes. After the file had completed downloading, the voice on my phone change to a very acceptable voice that was easy to listen to. It also offered accurate pronunciation of letters as I was typing.
That prompt never came up on this S7. I looked through the Play Store, the Amazon App area, and the Galaxy apps app on my phone.. With no luck. So I am now stuck with the stock voices, and it's threatening to take my sanity. Can anyone out there direct me to any enhance or high-quality voices for the Samsung or Google Text-to-Speech engine? I cannot even find the Ivona HQ app for those voices.
Thank you in advance for your assistance and may God bless!

Hello BlindSurvivor - this is the first chance that I've had to actually sit down with my phone and look into settings and see if I could help. I went to Settings, then Personal, then Accessibility, clicked on Vision and then just scrolled down to Text-to-Speech and clicked on it. For some reason, Google Text-to-Speech was already selected on my phone and I don't remember doing that myself (of course I'm 66 years old - I could have!) When I clicked the settings gear icon for Google Text-to-Speech, I got Language, Settings for Google Text-to-Speech and Install voice data. Language was obvious, Settings was pretty standard stuff that didn't need any changes but Install Voice Data brought me to a list of countries where I scrolled down to English (United States) and clicked that, which opened "Voice set 1 - 10 MB which I clicked this opened up a list of seven voices, all of which sounded very nice - loud, but very nice. Three males and four females.

The Samsung Text-to-Speech gives you a couple of choice but I found no way to listen to the sound of the voices... that may be what you are running and having the issue with. I hope my instructions aren't too complex for you to find your way through. Let me know if there's a better way I could explain it for you and I'll try to re-word it or even turn it into a numbered list of steps maybe? Good luck

Jim D

 

[BlindSurvivor]

Hello Jim,

You are 100% correct on the steps you took. I have taken them many times on many phones. I found the voice pack but in comparison to the voice I am talking about, they are terrible.

Nahoku...
Thank you very much for those links. Unfortunately, my screen reader cannot separate them from the entire post. They become part of the post itself, and cannot be separated. You'd be willing, could you please send me each link in a separate p.m.? It would be more than appreciated.
My thanks and God bless.

 

[nahoku]

could you please send me each link in a separate p.m.?

I'll do that. Three separate pm's in the order I originally posted them. I hope you find them useful.

 

[nahoku]

https://www.ivona.com/us/

 

[nahoku]

https://www.reddit.com/r/AndroidQues...available_for/

 

[jimd1050]

Hello Jim,

You are 100% correct on the steps you took. I have taken them many times on many phones. I found the voice pack but in comparison to the voice I am talking about, they are terrible.

HA! What an "idi-ought" (and I'm talking about myself here Admins)! I had my phone plugged into my computer and running Samsung Sidesync the entire time I was doing your research, so of course, Sidesync uses the computer speakers, NOT the phone's speakers and audio amplifier. When you replied and told me you had tried it and "they are terrible" I thought about it. Then it hit me... I unplugged and tried the sequence using the phone... they are tinny! I think you are going to have an issue because it's related to the audio amplifier and speaker of the S7 Active and NOT the voice programs. I notice even my musice isn't as nice as it was on my Note 5 or Note 7 phones but I just live with it. I never gave that a thought and I am sorry.

 

[Adena92]

I don't own a S7, so I don't know what it's capabilities are. If you are bline, you can download APK free where you can download or install voice data: https://apkpure.co/developer/ivona-text-to-speech/