Do you use a male or female voice for your voice announcements?

[electron]

I always wondered about this, and this CNN article posted today reminded me to post this poll Wife seems to prefer a male voice, but is ok with the female voice (which is what I use).

 

[Kevin L]

The only voice announcements I currently use are the Elk M1 voice announcements. My wife never said she didn't like it.

 

[pete_c]

I've been playing with different voice fonts on different touch screens (to bug my wife mostly). She did ask me why I always use a female versus a male voice last week.

I said I don't know. I do remember the first TTS voice in the house in the 1980's was female and the kids gave "her" a name.

I remember talking to the developer of the "voice font" that I used. He mentioned that it was his secretary's voice that he used to create it.

 

[video321]

I would always pick a female voice for anything that uses announcements - just more soft & soothing.

Though....there is that notion that guys will use a male voice for their GPS because they don't need another woman telling them where to go

 

[123]

ELK M1 -> Female
No option to change gender of the M1's announcement's but that's never been an issue. The M1's spoken voice is serviceable.

Premise -> Male
NeoSpeech Paul's voice is clear, pleasant, and fairly neutral (i.e. no unusual voice inflections).

 

[jwilson56]

I also use NeoSpeech Paul here. The wife and I feel it is the most understandable and clear sounding voice.

 

[Neurorad]

In my car, the helpful voice for commands is male. "Voice activation system...I couldn't understand you. Please repeat."

The car nav system directions are provided in a female voice. "Take your next left, [idiot]...make a legal U-turn, [dummy]...[are you deaf too?]"

 

[JeffCharger]

In my car, the helpful voice for commands is male. "Voice activation system...I couldn't understand you. Please repeat."

The car nav system directions are provided in a female voice. "Take your next left, [idiot]...make a legal U-turn, [dummy]...[are you deaf too?]"

I use neospeech "Kate". She's gorgeous!

 

[jay]

neospeech Kate and Paul

 

[fcwilt]

I use a female voice for informational things that can safely be ignored.

I use a male voice for alarms and such that should not be ignored.

 

[broconne]

It seems that a lot of people are using neospeech. It isn't clear to me from their website how you can acquire that for home use? There is a sales inquiry form - but I didn't see a simple "I want to buy this for personal use". Did something change or am I just missing where that is?

 

[JeffCharger]

Home seer used to sell these voices...but no longer. In my opinion these were the best voices at the time. I still look at other voices and dtermine that neospeech still ranks at the top.

 

[electron]

IMO they are one of the best voice engines for sure. Unless AO still sells them, it is going to be hard to get a hold of them (afaik, Homeseer no longer has a license to sell them). There are a few other nice engines out there, but they tend to be licensed for use with a single application, and aren't SAPI5 compatible.

 

[fcwilt]

This site has a number of different "brands" of voices:

http://www.nextup.com/index.html

I find the AT&T voices pretty good.

 

[electron]

I had the AT&T voices before I purchased the Neospeech voices. They aren't bad, but use more resources. That site has many voices listed, but many of the good ones are locked down to just their software.