Dear all, I have been thinking of late about the difference between the two different voices you get with Voiceover premium and compact so here are my thoughts. I would love to know what you think yourself and if you want to add to the discussion then by all means feel free to do so.
Note: this list is by no means extensive its just what I think and what I write may differ to each and everyone’s personal experience. This is evaluated with the english Daniel voice. Premium voices Advantages: 1. Of a higher quality to listen to when reading. 2. Louder in volume. 3. At times, may pronounce a word more clearly in addition, also be more accurate at saying certain words better. Disadvantages: 1. When trying to speed up the voice after 45% on OSX or 30% on IOS. Find that they become less intelligible to understand. Therefore, finding that I have to remain at the above percentages or even decrease the speed. 2. When reading passages that contain words e.g. the, in, were, her and with. Find that such short words can be easily missed. So then I'm forced to interact with document, HTML area of webpage etc to find the currently missed word and then resume with say all after understanding it with the words method either IOS or OSX. Compact voices Advantages: 1. Able to easily speed up above the previous percentages. In other words, listen to the voices at a reasonably faster speaking-rate. 2. When reading documents find that shorter words are read, pronounced and spoken better. This seems to be the case too when reviewing by words. 3. Overall, to me it seems to be a better experience when reading by say all in the fact that clarity, pronunciation and understandability are the key factors to my hearing and productivity. For me, the premium voices seem to be a bit for lack of a better word “strong on the ear.” I find the compact voices more robotic and interestingly this feels more natural to hear for me. However, Feel free to dis-agree if you want to and if so I would love to know why? Disadvantages 1. obviously, the voices are of a lower quality so some people may find or even struggle to use the compact voices hence the premium ones for those who need them for a more natural sounding reading experience. 2. Pronunciation and clarity of words may not be for the end user liking. Again, echoing the above with a different factor this being the compact version taken into account. Conclusion This primarily being focused on the UK Daniel voice. Compact or premium. I have found that I move towards the compact version of this voice. However, since the release of Mavericks and IOS7, I make use occasionally of the premium version in certain cases since they have made compact more worser in my humble opinion in the latest version of the operating systems than there previous counterparts. Now is though where you guys come in. For those who are using the Nuance voices on OSX and IOS which voice do you use and do you prefer compact or premium and if so why? Seriously, ladies and gentlemen, I would love to know what you use and why you use it. I have done extensive testing to the best of my ability which is why I wanted to post my experience and findings to you in the hope that you will share your own thoughts too about the voices. If you could share as much information as possible on how you use your voices speaking rate, type of voice etc then would be grate. I just want to know how others use there voices and what they prefer etc. Ok I’m going to stop now. If you haven’t already fallen asleep by the end of this post then full marks to you. lol Its I wanted to make it as detailed as possible so that people know what I’m asking. Thank you Daniel -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
