Horrible new robot voice in Navigation

[Dave-in-Decatur]

Before the 4.3 update, my wife and I were traveling in California and made much use of Google Maps Navigation. The female voice, while entertainingly incompetent at pronouncing some place names (especially Spanish ones), was at least not unpleasant to listen to. Back home and after the 4.3 update, I've done some driving around using the same Google Maps Navigation, and-- holy smokes, what planet did they find this lady robot on? It still gets you there, but it is really ugly and hard to listen to. All a matter of taste, I suppose, but I find it very grating.

[egaff13]

Try this:

Setting -> Accessibility -> Text-to-Speech Options

Then select Google Text-to-Speech Engine

Lady robot must be the Samsung voice.

I had to make sure the maps app was completely closed, but once I reopened it, navigation used the new voice.

[Dave-in-Decatur]

Thanks, that's great! I would never have found this myself. On my phone it's in the Vision section of Settings > My Device > Accessibility, along with other options for people with limited vision. I understand why Text-to-speech is there; I don't understand why an option to control the navigation voice is found only there.

Annnywayy.... There it is, and I found that, as you say, the voice I think is robotic is the default Samsung engine. Switching to Google gets a female voice that sounds more human (and, in fact, more Midwestern, to my Midwest-raised ear), and I'm going with that for now.

There are other options too. Clicking the gear icon for the Google engine allows a Language choice of English (U.K.), which gives a rather nice male voice (a little Stephen-Hawking-ish). Clicking the gear icon for the Samsung engine also offers a U.K. voice (female, and definitely better than the U.S. robot). Furthermore, it has an Install voice data option to download a "high quality" English (U.S.) voice that I believe is the one I used to hear. That'll be my choice if Ms. Midwest doesn't work out.

Thanks again, egaff. This was a really easy solution to implement for a rather annoying problem.

[Ann154]

I remembered having a different voice after an update on either the Galaxy Nexus or the S4 that I disliked. Either I changed it or got used to it. I don't remember which.

I did check my S4 now and I did have it on the Google text to speech engine and it worked well for this past week when I needed to use Navigation a lot more than usual.

I also had the option to download the high quality voice when I selected the Samsung engine. I declined since I prefer to use the same text to speech engine across multiple devices.

[Dave-in-Decatur]

BTW for still more fun, I discovered that there's a setting there to control the rate of speech. I highly recommend listening to the Fastest setting.

[SuzyQ]

Dave-in-Decatur wrote:

BTW for still more fun, I discovered that there's a setting there to control the rate of speech. I highly recommend listening to the Fastest setting.

LOL - to each his own, Dave-in-Decatur - I had to slow it down, even at the "normal" setting, my brain couldn't "listen" fast enough!  For entertainment value, the fastest setting is fun to listen to, but for me to actually understand and comprehend what's being said, I need one level slower than normal!