1.7.4: Why has the British English voice changed to American?

[emrys....@gmail.com]

I installed OsmAnd about 2 weeks ago and was very pleased with the voice output in navigation, especially since the lady had a nice British accent. But the automatic upgrade to 1.7.4 has caused her to have an American accent, without me changing anything! I have looked at 

https://code.google.com/p/osmand/wiki/OsmAndRegionalSettings

and cannot see what might have gone wrong.

Settings - navigation - car profile- voice guidance - is set to en-tts

Settings / General / Osmand development / "Test voice prompts" unfortunately does nothing, it produces a blank white screen. I have seen this screen in the past offer a long list of phrases to test, but it is not working now. I can test voice prompts by creating a route and starting navigation. I have the development plugin enabled.

Settings - general - display language - is set either to System or to English. Both produce an American Accent.

But my Android OS settings are:

Settings- language and Input - Language -: English (United Kingdom)

Settings - Language and input - Text-to-speech-ouput - google-text-to-speech engine - Language - English (united Kingdom)

Settings - Language and input - Text-to-speech-ouput - google-text-to-speech engine - Install voice data - English (united Kingdom) -: Female (high quality) is installed and selected

Settings - Language and input - Text-to-speech-ouput - Listen to an example - produces an English accent.

Does anyone know how I can get the British-English Satnav lady back?

Thanks!

[Hardy]

This is weird ... I already had a message like this from another user a few weeks ago, and could not really track the issue down. If I understand you correctly, you did not change devices, did not change the Android settings, and did not do a firmware upgrade on your device, so you are quite certain this solely results from updating OsmAnd, right?

 

Regarding our development feature "Test voice prompts": This produces the blank screen if you re-select the exact same language already  initialized when entering the selection screen (it is an old issue, but this is a dev function only...). So in order to get it to work: Either start the app fresh, (or if you had already used e.g. en-tts since the app start), select another language upon calling "test voice rpompts" (like de-tts) at the pop-up selection screen. Then you can exit the test voice prompts screen, re-enter it, then select en-tts, and it should work.

 

But again: I need more information maybe also from other users about the main issue American vs. British, because I have no clue for now what change could have caused this: SDK, our code, or what.

 

Thx-Hardy

[Max Erickson]

Could be related to TTS updates, there are reviews complaining about Google Play Books doing the same thing after the recent update:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.tts

It seems likely that Google changed the behavior of Locale('en') (which I believe is what OSMAnd ends up using during the tts initialization, reading the 'en' out of the prolog file).


Max

[Kevin Dalley]

My problem with voice is different. My American voice no longer works. osmand says:

   unsupported version of voice data

when I use en-tts. Though I can use "en" successfully. Before the recent osmand upgrade, the voice "en-tts" worked, though it was very choppy. I have an older Android. Maybe there are issues with its speed, though it can generally speak OK; Google maps does fine with its voice.

This issue may be unrelated.

[Hardy]

Max, yes, we use Locale('en'), and this has not changed. Trouble is that even if I set my device to google-tts/Enligh(United Kingdom), and then change OsmAnd to use locale('en_GB'), I _still_ get American. (If this worked, I could simply offer a en_GB-tts option in OsmAnd, but it doesn't) ...

 

I am not sure what else to try for now... maybe Victor has another idea.

[emrys....@gmail.com]

This seems possible - there are certainly complaints that the accent is wrong in other apps too recently. In fact, I just tried the read-aloud feature in Google Books on this tablet, and that came out in an American accent too. That's definitely broken. So, while it's annoying, it looks like it's not osmAnd's fault.

Thanks!

[Max Erickson]

For what it's worth, on a first gen Nexus 7, selecting "United Kingdom" in the tts settings doesn't change the voice but forcing "en_GB" changes the voice even if the tts setting is US.

[Hardy]

Really weird, because on all devices I tried now, forcing OsmAnd to use en_GB (in the voice config file) did _still_ result in the American voice coming up...

 

But what I do notice is this: If in our developers' test voice prompt interface I altrernatingly initiate en-tts and my temporary en_GB-tts, both voice do initialize (which they should not if they were the same engine call, see the bug I described somewhere above.). The outcome, however, is always the same: The female American voice.

 

- Has anybody tested how OsmAnd 1.7.x behaves with other tts engines line SVOX?

- Has anybody tested google's new tts update ? (http://www.google.de/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&frm=1&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CC4QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.androidpolice.com%2F2014%2F03%2F05%2Fgoogle-releases-huge-text-to-speech-tts-for-android-update-v3-0-with-high-quality-voices-new-languages-and-ui-changes-apk-download%2F&ei=8dxDU6yxMsPZtQb18YHYAg&usg=AFQjCNHoSMNp-wPAFCEEUfIx8POjK-nXZw) But I have no luck with that either so far.

- Can anybody pinpoint if there is a certain nightly build with which OsmAnd quit behaving correctly? I have looked at the commit history of most relevant files now, and simply cannot identify any change we may have made which could have affected this ...

 

Thx - Hardy

 

 

[Erik den Tonkelaar]

Maybe somehow related.

I have updated osmand(free): from version 1.6.5 to version 1.7.5, and voice is working.
However I have also installed osmand+(paid): version 1.6.5, and voice was always working. i have not updated osmand+ (paid), yet. But now I get the same error "unsupported version of voice data" with version 1.6.5 of osmand+(paid). I do not know if it has something to do with updating osmand(free) tot 1.7.5 ?

Met vriendelijke groeten, Erik
Samsung S4 with android 4.3.

[Paul Oakley]

Possible solution

I am running osmand 1.5 on cyanogenmod 11 and I solved the problem by installing th english uk male voice pack and setting this as my tts output, when I checked osmand I got a male british voice, I then set the voice output to english uk female and this worked

Google tts settings, install voice data, english uk, then select the voice

[Paul Oakley]

Update

The above setting wasn't persistent after a reboot so I set google tts output to US English and then back to UK English and this seems to work, will update with any further issues that I find.

[Andrew Gray]

Thanks for this tip.  In my case the voice selection did persist after a reboot (OsmAnd 1.7.5 on Sony official ICS).  I also uninstalled the male voice and rebooted again, and still got the expected female voice, so this seems to have completely fixed it for me.

[Barry Evans]

Since updating my Samsung Galaxy S3 to Android 4.3 (and hard reset) I have encountered some problems with managing TTS across apps. In OSMAND+ I frequently get asked to install TTS even though I have done it many times. 

[Alan Field]

I just found that starting the Osmand+ app with the sound on my device muted it switched to a dreadful scratchy American accent. It seemed stuck that way. Reading the suggestion to switch in android settings to a different language and then back again fixed the problem.

[Alan Field]

On Saturday, 15 November 2014 12:30:13 UTC, Alan Field wrote:

I just found that starting the Osmand+ app with the sound on my device muted it switched to a dreadful scratchy American accent. It seemed stuck that way. Reading the suggestion to switch in android settings to a different language and then back again fixed the problem.

UPDATE....

Google screwed things up again. After the latest TTS auto update I couldn't get a UK accent even in the Android settings. I uninstalled the TTS updates and everything is fine again.  A Google problem, not an Osmand one.

[Andrew Hurlbatt]

For anyone who comes across this thread hunting for a solution, I've managed to get the British voice back.

In your osmand folder, there will be a folder voice/en-tts containing a file _ttsconfig.p which tells the TTS engine (usually Google) what to do. Simply open this in a text editor, and on line 10 (as of version available 15/08/15) change language('en'). to language('en_gb'). (just add the "_gb"). This should then make Osmand use the male or female UK english voice that you have chosen in your Android settings.

[P Wat]

Hi Andrew H. - Thank you. Thank you. THANK YOU!
My TTS seems to be dated ‎21 ‎June ‎2015, ‏‎13:01:25 but the change you suggest works fine. Also had to make a change in Android, Settings, Language and input, Speech, Text-to-speech output, Google Text-to-speech, Language - changed from "Use system language" to "English UK", then shut down and re-started the phone.  (Maybe that's all I needed anyway, without the file amendment, but thanks anyway.)
Been tolerating the USA voice for months while waiting to learn how to fix it.
Ah; the pleasure of using Osmand is enhanced with the dulcet tones of real UK English at last!
Regards
Paul W
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