TomTom Mobile Voice - strange pronunciation!

[Spacerocker]

Hi! I have been using TomTom Mobile (on a subscription service) for a number of years, and have generally found it to be excellent!

However, there was a recent significant update, and since then, "Serena" seems to be struggling with her pronunciation somewhat! Is she OK? Has she had a stroke? The problem seems to be mainly words with the letter "R" in the middle, for example:

"Parke Road" is pronounced "Par-rrrukkke road"
"Lutterworth" is pronounced "Lutte-rrrrr-wer-ruuth"
And (strangely) "Lawford" is pronounced "Lorrffeeee"!!!

It's a minor irritation, and does give us a laugh at times - but why is this happening? The previous version was fine!

 

[Arno]

Cannot test, Serena is greyed out on my phone.

 

[canderson]

It's a minor irritation, and does give us a laugh at times - but why is this happening? The previous version was fine!

I'm guessing that you did not just perform an update of a voice - in indeed a voice update was done, but instead, also got a firmware update at the same time? I take it this started immediately after the updates? What version of the app are you running, and on what device?

 

[Spacerocker]

I'm guessing that you did not just perform an update of a voice - in indeed a voice update was done, but instead, also got a firmware update at the same time? I take it this started immediately after the updates? What version of the app are you running, and on what device?

Yes - I had to do a map update before it would let me plan a route, and it updated the firmware as well. The new version has a different look (which I like) it's just the voice problems!.....

The version on my phone is App Version 3.2.12 (4140). I'm running it on a Samsung Note 8 phone

 

[canderson]

Perhaps dhn can point you to the best section on the corporate site where you may find others with this issue, and can report it there. Sounds to me like a firmware issue - the app seems to be having issues with having enough cpu cycles to get the job done.

 

[dhn]

You can go to TomTom's official site, register a user id/pw (free) and perhaps post in this section:

TomTom AmiGO app for Android™ — TomTom Community

 

[didsbury]

I have the same problem, did you resolve yours?

 

[Spacerocker]

I have the same problem, did you resolve yours?

Nope! I never did...But I haven't tried some of the suggestions above, yet (report to corporate site, etc...) Found a new one recently! "Narborough" is (apparently) "Narr-rrarrr-rrah!

Glad I'm not the only one with this problem!

 

[didsbury]

Since I posted I did find other Serena problems on the Tomtom site. They're looking at it. I've decided to start seeing more of Karen. However I probably won't need it before next week.
The first few misprounciations are amusing, then it's irritating.

 

[Andybushman]

We are now 1 year on and the issue is still present for me. I have since had a new phone and have done a number of reinstalls but still get the odd pronunciation issues. I tried Karen but I can't stand the way "exit" is pronounced.

 

[canderson]

We are now 1 year on and the issue is still present for me. I have since had a new phone and have done a number of reinstalls but still get the odd pronunciation issues. I tried Karen but I can't stand the way "exit" is pronounced.

Are you still getting the stuttering problem that this thread was originally discussing?

What do you feel that Karen is doing to mangle "exit"? She's an Aussie, and it appears you're from the UK, so there's bound to be a few sounds that grate back and forth. Why not use Serena, the UK voice?

 

[Andybushman]

Hi
I still get the stuttering with Serena which is why I tried other voices.

 

[didsbury]

Still the same for me too.

 

[Spacerocker]

Are you still getting the stuttering problem that this thread was originally discussing?

What do you feel that Karen is doing to mangle "exit"? She's an Aussie, and it appears you're from the UK, so there's bound to be a few sounds that grate back and forth. Why not use Serena, the UK voice?

Serena is the voice I complained about in the first post - it's not really a stuttering, but an over pronunciation of the letter "R" in the middle of words - e.g "Church St" = Chur-rutch st, "Park Road" = Par-ruck Road, etc...and yes - it is still driving me mad! What i cannot understand is that this voice was fine until Tom Tom did their "makeover" of the app about 18 months ago.....

 

[canderson]

Hi
I still get the stuttering with Serena which is why I tried other voices.

Ah, OK. It was the first time we had heard from you in this thread, so making sure it was exactly the same issue.

It was so much more interesting back in the old Nav2 days when these devices' file structures were open and we could edit things. There were ways a motivated user could modify files to impact pronunciation back then.

Meanwhile, all you can do is open tickets at TomTom and hope they clean it up.

 

[cjtykes]

I get this very same issue with the Serena voice, have done for a good year or so, i did report it to tomtom on the support forums and they did say they were aware of it and would see if theres a fix, if i did a complete reinstall of the app it fixed it, but then the voice would curupt, seems to be the R sounds. Using other computer voices is fine, they dont seem to suffer from the same issue. ive had this on both my old Samsung S8 and my Pixel6, so its not device replated.

 

[Andybushman]

Updated my app today and they now have some tts voices added which I think are from my phone. Certainly has given me a different voice to use that is British and doesent have the speach impairment of Serena. This is version 3.6.96-beta released 29th December.

 

[canderson]

Interesting. I am running 3.6.96-beta as well, and when I select "Download a voice", I just see the usual suspects - not the generic unnamed ones you show on your device.

 

[Andybushman]

How odd. I am running on Samsung s22 ultra, not sure if it makes a difference.

 

[Andybushman]

Ahhh. I remember what I did. I went Into Tomtom labs and enabled TTS vouce