XL340s Pronunciation issues and the word "Road"

[dnmartin98]

Hello all,

I own a xl340s which we bought about 2 months ago when it first came out. Generally we love it, but the text to speech is really pretty awful. A lot of street names are unintelligble when it reads them, seemingly to so with both pronunciation and also the fact that it just runs words together. However, most infuriating, is the fact that it can't say the word "road" properly...it says ro-add. That seems like a pretty basic and important word for a GPS to say...lol

We have tried numerous voices, but they are all pretty useless on road names. Are there any fixes for this? I am sure that I am not the only one with this problem!

DavidM

 

[mvl]

Computer voices still have a long way to go. They still mispronounce many things, although a lot fewer mispronounciations than a couple of years ago.

The Loquendo TTS engine on the 340 has an extensive hint file. I haven't been successful getting words not to bunch together, however try opening the hint file below on your Tomtom drive with notepad, and see if you can add something like "road" = "rode" to see if it helps any.

\LoquendoTTS\data\roadnrEnglishUS.lex

My Tomtom 720 uses an older Loquendo revision than yours, and it doesn't mispronounce "road", so I can't confirm if the fix will actually work.

 

[gatorguy]

TomTom purchases the voice engine software from Loquendo. It's up to the developer (TomTom in this case) to fine-tune the timing, abbreviation data base conversion to speech, regional pronunciation preferences, etc.

IMO, TomTom should spend a little more time on that task before releasing it to their users. In my personal experience, there are others such as Garmin (who developed their own speech engine) that are much more accurate in their street pronunciations.

 

[theparson]

This is strange. I have a 140S which I believe has the same software as yours, but mine pronounces "road" just fine.

 

[doctormstein1]

pronounciation

my pet peave is when go to say 37 S or south it says 37S like the plural.

 

[alwayslost]

my pet peave is when go to say 37 S or south it says 37S like the plural.

Did you delete all the US English TTS voices from your device?

Make sure there's a US English TTS voice on your device (Even if you don't want to use it). I think this feature runs off the roadnrEnglishUS.lex and roadnrEnglishUS.rex files and you MAY be able to do it with only those files, but have not tested this.

You should now hear "Route 37 South,, Interstate 95 Northbound" etc. even when using UK English voices

I've tried it with the language settings as US English and UK English. No problems either way.

 

[fotyfoe]

I know what you mean about the pronunciation. My 325 which I don't even want to discuss right now because of all it's problems can't talk either. If the display shows "Main St", it will say "main saint" instead of "main street".

 

[tracker]

The highway by us is M-53, yet my TomTom XXL 540 using the U.S. computer voice Susan shows and says "Hwy 53/Hwy 53S Van Dyke Ave". It repeats the highway name for some reason and then doesn't say "South". I tried to do a map correction to at least try and put a space between the 53 and S, so that it would say South but the highway number doesn't show up.

The pronunciation of alot of streets sound just awful. I really wish TomTom would work on improving this.

 

[CynicX]

Is there any form of TTS used anywhere that is actually "good". Since roads are NAMES they dont have to be pronounced anyway near how they are spelled. This will make perfect TTS impossible. But getting things like ROAD and STREET messed up on a navigation device? Come on....

 

[sitcomchap]

accent?

I was really bothered by my TomTom's street pronunciation. (My previous garmin was much much better.) But now it got worse....

I was riding home today, heading into Los Angeles. And the TomTom announced that I was heading to Los Ahn-Hell-Ace. Not Los Anne-Jell-es. But Los Ahn-Hell-Ace. I thought, have I chosen a voice with a spanish pronunciation? But I was using "Dave". My kids started laughing. They thought it was some kind of joke.

I don't get it. It is bad enough that I have to hear my street mispronounced everytime I come home. Now, if I drive out of L.A. and return, I hear the city mispronounced too.

I bought this from Target, which has a 90 day return policy. I am going to play with it a little more, but I think this baby is headed back to the store.

 

[leggy]

I was really bothered by my TomTom's street pronunciation. (My previous garmin was much much better.) But now it got worse....

I was riding home today, heading into Los Angeles. And the TomTom announced that I was heading to Los Ahn-Hell-Ace. Not Los Anne-Jell-es. But Los Ahn-Hell-Ace. I thought, have I chosen a voice with a spanish pronunciation? But I was using "Dave". My kids started laughing. They thought it was some kind of joke.

I don't get it. It is bad enough that I have to hear my street mispronounced everytime I come home. Now, if I drive out of L.A. and return, I hear the city mispronounced too.

I bought this from Target, which has a 90 day return policy. I am going to play with it a little more, but I think this baby is headed back to the store.

If voice is your first concern then get Garmin, if routing is your first concern then stay with TT

 

[Towerblock]

Garmin 255WT and TT 340s

If voice is your first concern then get Garmin, if routing is your first concern then stay with TT

Totally agree. I bought the Garmin 255WT and a TT 335S and 340S and the Garmin pronounces street names more intelligibly. The Garmin has a couple of other more serious issues though..it will often wait till the last second to tell you to turn on a street making for some serious last minute lane crossing! Not very safe. The TT's give me plenty of warning regarding turn lanes etc. I DO wish they could pronounce street names more correctly though.

The Garmin says the names better, but the voice is more like a robot and the sound files are very compressed making for a very scratchy low fi sounding voice..

 

[misterbk]

There's no excuse for the text to speech being so far off.

I run a linux box at home and its ancient free open-source TTS perfectly pronounces everything that the TomTom cannot.

I live in California and I have yet to encounter a road whose name I can deduce from the garbled mess this thing spits out.


If a GPS cannot read directions, what use is it? I really may have to return this thing.

 

[mvl]

Did you update to the 9.x application? Europeans say that the TTS is slower and more understandable on the GO x50, I'm not sure if the 9.x application update to the 140 or 340 does the same thing.

 

[mvl]

misterbk, to not confuse others who are inquiring about the 340S and it's different application and issues, I moved your posts regarding the Tomtom 740 to your other thread here.

 

[misterbk]

Yes, sorry, I had not yet figured out the model numbers and their potential differences. (Still haven't really...)

My posts were in reference to the Tomtom Go 740 Live.

 

[rsivan]

is there a way to submit correct street pronunciatons?

In the Boston area there is a very central parkway called VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars) parkway.

We all know it by the name 'Vee-Ef-Double U', however the computer pronounces it something like: 'Wars' parkway (probably from Veterans of Foreign Wars).
I'd like to submit a correction.
Thanks.
Reuben

 

[mvl]

The Loquendo Tomtom models don't do that (I live 2 blocks from VFW parkway). Instead they mispronounce "Veterans ON Foreign Wars".

What model do you have? Is it an XL325 or XL330? They have a different speech vendor.

 

[gamehendge2000]

I have the TT 340S, and have taken it on many trips to SF Bay area.

It pronounces 101 as "One West One". What was most surprising was "Expy" - I would have assumed it would have understood this abbreviation - I can't even type an approximation of what this sounded like.

I didn't know about the loquendo files, I'll try and update those directly and see if that is successful

 

[dhn]

Try using Explorer to rename your cphoneme.dat file to cphoneme.old and see if the pronounciation improves.

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