View previous topic :: View next topic |
Author |
Message |
DaveMatthews Regular Visitor
Joined: Dec 25, 2004 Posts: 221
|
Posted: Sun Mar 08, 2009 3:58 pm Post subject: Enunciation quality of x40 TTS voices |
|
|
Hi all.
I'm putting togther a review of my 940 (to submit to this site later this month) and although I think it's a brilliant bit of kit in many ways, its biggest letdown for me is the TTS. My previous SatNav was a NavMan S90i which was an utter disaster in most respects but its TTS was noticeably better. I'd like to ask whether people agree with the following observations of TTS on the x40 range or perhaps it's simply something being out of kilter on my own unit...
(I'm using the "Kate" voice)
While generic instructions (such as "Turn left", "Turn around as soon as possible", "Keep right", etc) are enunciated clearly, street name pronunciation is frequently strange and/or unclear. The most obvious problem is that of vowel sounds being dropped or changed. For example "Lancaster Street" is pronounced as "Lankster Strit". Sometimes this is exacerbated by two words being prounounced as one (eg "Main Street" becomes "Minstrit", while "Peel Lane" becomes simply "Plane"!!!). Some consonants are similarly mis-handled, for example "Crag Road" is announced as "Crack Road", while "Upfield Lane" mangles the vowels and loses the "D" to become "Upfill Lane". The unit can also read aloud weather reports but the pronunciation of the words "celcius" and "temperature" is hilariously wobbly!
Deleting and reinstalling the voice and a full reset of the unit did not address these faults.
When actually reaching a junction, the road name is often NOT repeated for some reason - I can't fathom any predicatable pattern to this behaviour.
The ultimate measure of success for TTS is whether I have to look at the screen to clarify the street names - and sadly I frequently do. Actually I found the "Simon" voice to be ever so slightly better in that although it made the same mistakes, the diction of consonants is generally clearer.
OK, that's my critique - fair or foul?
--
Cheers,
Dave |
|
Back to top |
|
|
mikealder Pocket GPS Moderator
Joined: Jan 14, 2005 Posts: 19638 Location: Blackpool , Lancs
|
Posted: Sun Mar 08, 2009 4:06 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Dave, thats quite an accurate summary of the TTS on the devices at the moment. The best TTS voices IMO were those offered with the 910 device, but they consumed a whopping 4GB of the hard drive space, each single voice file was around 400MB! - The current TTS voice files are only around 10% of this value - Mike |
|
Back to top |
|
|
andy-c1 Lifetime Member
Joined: Feb 05, 2005 Posts: 1039 Location: East Sussex
|
Posted: Sun Mar 08, 2009 4:28 pm Post subject: |
|
|
trying typing in "natwest" brings out the weirdest pronunciation
but I suppose it does come down to space on a unit and what can be done or not or maybe it slows down everything being a huge voice file _________________ TomTom 5001 |
|
Back to top |
|
|
flyingfuzz Regular Visitor
Joined: Aug 19, 2008 Posts: 69 Location: UK - South
|
Posted: Sun Mar 08, 2009 6:35 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Having worked on a TTS solution for reading emails I can tell you that we had to do a lot of pre-processing of the text before we ran this through the TTS engine.
Most of the pre-processing work revolved around adding extra spaces between words to prevent it sounding like words were joined together, a space gave an amount of time before the next word was spoken so more spaces a bigger pause.
But the biggest work around we had to do was around place and surnames. To get the correct pronunciation required attempting new spellings to get the TTS to sound right. At the end of the day some place names spelling looked nothing like the original spelling.
For example the place Chineham is pounced Chinham. |
|
Back to top |
|
|
DaveMatthews Regular Visitor
Joined: Dec 25, 2004 Posts: 221
|
Posted: Sun Mar 08, 2009 9:59 pm Post subject: |
|
|
flyingfuzz wrote: |
But the biggest work around we had to do was around place and surnames. To get the correct pronunciation required attempting new spellings to get the TTS to sound right. At the end of the day some place names spelling looked nothing like the original spelling.
|
Sure but the examples I quoted were ones that I would have thought pretty easy - I mean how many ways are there to pronounce "Peel" or "Street"? Even long place names such as "Lancaster" are pretty easy when you break it down into its constituent syllables: "Lan", "cas", "ter".
Interestingly when I give it very difficult words such as "Gloucestershire" the TT handles that with no problem. But it pronounces "Devonshire" and "Nottinghamshire" as "Devonsh" and "Nottingsh"!?!
flyingfuzz wrote: |
For example the place Chineham is pounced Chinham. |
"Pounced"? I presume you mean "pronounced"? If *you've* been involved in doing TTS work, that certainly explains why the TomTom drops bits out of words!
--
Cheers
Dave |
|
Back to top |
|
|
Andy_P Pocket GPS Moderator
Joined: Jun 04, 2005 Posts: 19991 Location: West and Southwest London
|
Posted: Mon Mar 09, 2009 10:51 pm Post subject: |
|
|
My five pennyworth....
I can understand why some of our place names could easily give it problems, but I quite agree they could have tried a bit harder with words they KNOW it is going to have to say, like "Temperature" and "Celsius"!
Also, have you noticed there is a menu selection to report bad pronunciation?
But whenever I've tried to use it, when it repeats the word and asks if this is the word that is wrongly pronounced... it says it completely differently!
I think it's yet another case of the processor getting overloaded and the speech starts to give up. |
|
Back to top |
|
|
DaveMatthews Regular Visitor
Joined: Dec 25, 2004 Posts: 221
|
Posted: Tue Mar 10, 2009 3:23 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Andy_P wrote: |
Also, have you noticed there is a menu selection to report bad pronunciation?
|
No - can't find that! How do you access it?
Andy_P wrote: |
I think it's yet another case of the processor getting overloaded and the speech starts to give up.
|
Its graphics processing is certainly slow. In the "Browse Map" functionality it can take an age to redraw the map as you "pan" around. In 3D navigation mode the unit generally "keeps pace" with you very well but as soon as you negotiate a corner, it lags quite noticebly for a few seconds - I guess this is because the action of the turning the corner means that the unit has to perform a huge amount of "maths" to redraw the screen.
Interestingly, however, if you use the Home software's "Operate My Go" feature, map redraws on your PC screen are much faster. So clearly the TT is generating the data very quickly but is very slow to turn that into visual information. Does it have a separate graphics processor?
--
Cheers
Dave |
|
Back to top |
|
|
ASDTi Occasional Visitor
Joined: Apr 15, 2007 Posts: 6
|
Posted: Tue Mar 10, 2009 5:46 pm Post subject: Re: Enunciation quality of x40 TTS voices |
|
|
DaveMatthews wrote: |
OK, that's my critique - fair or foul?
Dave |
For what my twopenceworth is worth (!), I completely agree. Kate (especially) tends to elide the end of words.
I have also owned a Navman S90i - Dave I enjoyed your Amazon review (pity I didn't read it before I bought one) - and whilst I agree that its diction was better, I much prefer the quantity of TomTom speech. TomTom gives FAR more direction, which I find really useful. As a long term Nuvi owner too (yes I know !), the Garmin's TTS is not as good, sounding 'robotic' most of the time. |
|
Back to top |
|
|
bensonboo Regular Visitor
Joined: Feb 18, 2008 Posts: 65
|
Posted: Tue Mar 10, 2009 6:14 pm Post subject: |
|
|
flyingfuzz wrote: |
For example the place Chineham is pounced Chinham. |
It's pronounced "Chinum" |
|
Back to top |
|
|
gatorguy6996 Frequent Visitor
Joined: Feb 16, 2008 Posts: 695 Location: Florida, USA
|
Posted: Tue Mar 10, 2009 6:41 pm Post subject: |
|
|
While I find the Garmin 7x0 speech much easier to understand and more accurate in it's pronunciation than my TT930. Different strokes as ever. _________________ Garmin 1695 / 255 / 760 w/MSN - Droid w/Google nav + Navigon - Navigon 8100T - Dakota10 - GPSMap76C - GeoMate Jr. |
|
Back to top |
|
|
DaveMatthews Regular Visitor
Joined: Dec 25, 2004 Posts: 221
|
Posted: Tue Mar 10, 2009 7:47 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Testing out the theory that the processor isn't powerful enough to handle vocals properly, I switched off all but the very basic options for navigation mode and found an ever so slight improvement - "Peel Lane" was no longer pronounced as "Plane", for example. Overall, though, it's still not as good as NavMan, hence Mike's theory that it's simply space-saving short-cuts in the voice file encoding seems to be the culprit.
--
Cheers
Dave |
|
Back to top |
|
|
Andy_P Pocket GPS Moderator
Joined: Jun 04, 2005 Posts: 19991 Location: West and Southwest London
|
Posted: Wed Mar 11, 2009 2:58 am Post subject: |
|
|
Have you tried the "Simon" voice, Dave? for some reason it seems significantly better at not chopping the ends off words.
Re: reporting errors
Quote: | No - can't find that! How do you access it? |
It's a bit buried... (for a while there, I thought I was going mad and had dreamt it!)
Go to "Map Corrctions" / Correct a map error / Report other error / Existing street / on map / (find it on he map and tap Done) / the Last option is "Mispronounced street name" - Tick that and tap "Done". It should then speak to you and say the street name out loud.
But as I say, it's often different to how it just said it while it was navigating. |
|
Back to top |
|
|
Skwark Regular Visitor
Joined: Jan 30, 2005 Posts: 86
|
Posted: Wed Mar 11, 2009 10:53 am Post subject: |
|
|
TTS is one of those things that grates with me... pronunciation doesn't seem consistent and sometimes it seems to get overexcited and almost shout some names or read them out in a higher tone than normal.
Going back home towards Hull it pronounces it more like "Hole". Some would agree that's quite appropriate but still it's a basic word even for a place name and you would have thought it could have coped!
The biggest issue I find is cutting off words and instructions, very irritating and forces you to take your eyes off the road sometimes to try and work our what it was trying to tell you! |
|
Back to top |
|
|
AndyVaughan Lifetime Member
Joined: Apr 13, 2006 Posts: 1500 Location: Rossendale
|
Posted: Wed Mar 11, 2009 11:22 pm Post subject: |
|
|
At least it doesn't stutter as much on the x40s!
Andy |
|
Back to top |
|
|
DaveMatthews Regular Visitor
Joined: Dec 25, 2004 Posts: 221
|
Posted: Thu Mar 12, 2009 1:09 am Post subject: |
|
|
Andy_P wrote: | Have you tried the "Simon" voice, Dave? for some reason it seems significantly better at not chopping the ends off words.
|
In my experience it isn't "significantly" better. (The "Nottinghamsh" and "Devonsh" examples I gave earlier were from "Simon"), However, I would agree "Simon" is a tad better.
Thanks very much for the pointer to the "Mispronounced" option. I agree, however, that when using this, neither "Kate" nor "Simon" make the same mistakes as when "in flight"!
--
Cheers,
Dave |
|
Back to top |
|
|
|
Posted: Today Post subject: Pocket GPS Advertising |
|
|
We see you’re using an ad-blocker. We’re fine with that and won’t stop you visiting the site.
Have you considered making a donation towards website running costs?. Or you could disable your ad-blocker for this site. We think you’ll find our adverts are not overbearing!
|
|
Back to top |
|
|
|