Hi, I really enjoy the text to speech functionality on Mac, it’s my default way of “reading” nowadays. However, I am not sure which voice to pick, as there are so many (English). Is there an official quality ranking somewhere? If not, what’s everyone’s preferred voice?
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Chris Justin
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How Do I Pick the Best Text-to-speech Voice?
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I don't use this very often, but I think I prefer Samantha (enhanced) because she is close to Siri's default voice.
But of course it is subjective. And there may be some value to occasionally switching voices. I sometimes use text-to-speech to have my Mac read back something I have written so I can proof-read it. And in those cases sometimes it is good to have a voice you don't like so much, as I find it forces you to focus more on the works. But maybe that is just me.
Thanks for the quick reply and everything macmost, Gary!
Interesting to know that Samantha is close to Siri. She is one of my favourite along with Allison and Serena. I noticed that at maximum speed the differences between the voices become more pronounced, so that could be a deciding factor too. It would be nice to have a shortcut for switching voices, is that easy to set up? I'll try out some new voices when I need to have something proofread next time.
Well, at least I think Samantha is close to Siri. Others may disagree. I don't know of a simple shortcut to change voices, though you can tell Siri "System Preferences, Accessibility" to get there quickly. I know using Terminal and Automator to speak text you can specify which voice to use, so theoretically you can make Automator shortcuts to read selected text in a specific voice. But that could take a lot of work unless you are already good at using Automator.
Thanks Gary. I haven't used automator much before, but based on your recommendation I managed to set up a service that does the job. Have a good weekend