Voice sounds bad in most languages Topic is solved

[EranBarLev]

Voice sounds incomprehensible for every language except English, Hebrew and Arabic.
For example, all the French voice in the proverbs subforum and [mention]dakanga[/mention]'s conjugation tables sounds like gibberish.
Russian doesn't make any sound at all.

Test:
This is an apple.
C'est une pomme.
Esto es una manzana.
Isto é uma maçã.
Это яблоко.
هذه تفاحة.
זה תפוח.

[dakanga]

Thanks for this heads up [mention]EranBarLev[/mention] .

Though all this is beyond my control, on how things sound.
I am glad we can talk about this.

And ... perhaps someone in this community can find better solutions.

Or also, how we may be able to report this issue in appropriate way, so perhaps things might be able to be improved ?

I hope someone out there may have some suggestions.
Thanks for what this community does.

[Thomas.Heiss]

The blue audio buttons in THIS thread don't work at all on a Windows PC / Firefox Nightly browser.
If you click the link at the end of the sentence you will get redirected to the "Google translate" window with language auto detection and this (grey) translate audio button at the bottom works correctly.

The issue you're having is that the button is NOT linked to the target language, so the wrong TTS engine (English I guess) is picked up, not French, not Brazilian Portuguese, etc.

I believe it worked better on my Android Smartphone where TTS Pt-Br and FR do exist.
Would need to retry the audio button in daKanga's sentence threads.

[mention]EranBarLev[/mention]
So let me ask you: Do you use a Linux, Windows PC or Mac? Or do you use a smartphone?
And have you added the required TTS engines on your system?
If all this was done there might be an issue with the linked audio button and not declaring the target TTS language correctly (or that the engine is missing on your system/phone).

[Deleted User 4833]

I can hear everything on Firefox on my Macbook, and the phrases in all the languages I understand sound - well - understandable to me. (English, French, Spanish, Hebrew, Arabic).
On Safari on my Macbook, I can understand the first three - and all have a distinctly American accent. But, weirdly, I got a male voice instead of the female voice I got in the other places I tried. For Russian, Arabic, and Hebrew, instead of saying the phrase, the voice recites the name of each letter: Cyrillic letter _, Arabic letter _, Hebrew letter _.

On my iPhone on Safari and on Firebox, all the voices are very clear and the languages are understandable (and in what sounds like an American accent, again ) except for Arabic and Hebrew. When I click on the last two from within this thread, the voice says "Dot" for both Arabic and Hebrew.

But I haven't tested it from the Dakanga's links, only from the audio recordings in the OP.

I just tested the audio links in one of the French proverbes threads, and they were all understandable on a Macbook on Firebox.

Edit: I tested some of the audio in Dakanga's conjugation tables and they sounded very clear to me.

[GrahamW]

[mention]Thomas.Heiss[/mention] Since you've just posted about audio, Thomas, and you're an experienced Portuguese learner, perhaps you could offer some comments on the quality/consistency of the audio in the Portuguese course please, as I started that this year. If there's one type of Portuguese exercise that is killing my hearts, it's the listening exercises. I find the same words have different sounds in different exercises. Or is it just me?
One example off the top of my head is "mulheres". Sometimes the sound seems to end in "sh" and others it doesn't.

[EranBarLev]

@Thomas.Heiss Since you've just posted about audio, Thomas, and you're an experienced Portuguese learner, perhaps you could offer some comments on the quality/consistency of the audio in the Portuguese course please, as I started that this year. If there's one type of Portuguese exercise that is killing my hearts, it's the listening exercises. I find the same words have different sounds in different exercises. Or is it just me?
One example off the top of my head is "mulheres". Sometimes the sound seems to end in "sh" and others it doesn't.

I've never heard the owl pronounce the letter S as "sh" in the Portuguese course. I have heard a wrong pronunciation of the words "menino" and "menina", with the stress on the 1st syllable.

[EranBarLev]

And have you added the required TTS engines on your system?

I have now, and then everything started working! Thanks!
I had the English, Hebrew and Arabic TTS installed, so those languages worked.

[Thomas.Heiss]

I can confirm the linked audio files in THIS thread make sense to Firefox Nightly on Android.

But I've already added Pt-Br and French.

The last one (Hebrew) just doesn't work, just a single hearable click, but I have no TTS engine added for this one.

First 5-6 sentences sound comprehensible.
Funny that Russian or Spanish or the next one (Arabic) works too as I don't have those TTS engines installed.

[Thomas.Heiss]

Hi Graham,

worth a dedicated thread...maybe I find or create one.

Didn't write down all my free typed reports on the app what details are all wrong, but it's a pretty mix of "everything random" right now.
I was a Web user, now I have to stick to the old Android app.

perhaps you could offer some comments on the quality/consistency of the audio in the Portuguese course please

For a couple of years they have used more reliable TTS libraries for Brazilian Portuguese which got the rules more correct.

I didn't find the Duolingo Brazilian TTS audio too bad looking back to my last 6 years of learning this beautiful language.
At least we can slow it down..
Liked it more than Duolingo Spanish audio.

In comparison: Lingvist Spanish audio was high quality, crystal clear and really superb in 2017, sounded much better than Duolingo Spanish or Google translate, at least to me.

AFAIK there is a general problem with the new Microsoft Azure Ai TTS voice characters or how they're called, in several languages like French, Spanish,...and finally Pt-Br.

The new rules TTS engine is simply f...ed up at the moment (since last 1.0-1.5 years or a bit less) or was just copied over from French.
It does now many times the same like in French which is dropping the last consonant sound(s) of words which doesn't make any sense to Brazilian Portuguese
(European Portuguese also drops a lot of letters but I didn't learn it).

Also many times vocals are cut out, more often than before on old TTS libraries...
......not sure how it is with "real life Brazilian Portuguese" (maybe depends on the region) how often and when vocals or double vocals of two words following each other need to be cut or merged.

I've already reported tons of error reports in the Duolingo course when words or sentences sounded very wrong.
When you go to the sentence discussion the old TTS voice is played and usually gets it right.

Well, for Brazilian Portuguese I have some basic listening experience from other courses like Memrise, Mondly, 50languages, so the new Ai voices can't trick me that much anymore.
I'm also used to Google TTS Pt-Br because of Camilo's TreeEnhancer userscript (worked on the old website).

Something new:
Since a few days my old V5.52.5 Android (tree) app gives me quite difficult listening exercises.
Sometimes I can't understand the full sentence, need to replay it 3-5 times, use the slow audio button....

......a real challenge...
...(not that that's necessarily a bad thing, but I somehow can feel the sudden higher difficulty increasement which was not there before?!).

Or maybe it's just higher crown levels or rarer verb skill which I may have done more rarely and which contain very long sentences.

Is your impression the same that speed has picked up? Thought my listening ability is a bit better than this

So I can somehow understand you struggling as a new Pt-Br learner and then on top all the TTS audio errors because of the new Azure Ai cartoon voice library
(new ones don't sound too bad, not like French/Spanish complaints; Brazilian voices somehow -thankfully- are a milder version of existing cartoon voices unlike exaggerated Duolingo story Pt-Br voice actors....they can get onto your nerves pretty quickly).

I heard in real life with Brazilian Portuguese it can be somehow expected that some vocal o,e,... sounds are actually dropped at the end of a word?!??
But honestly, these detailed rules are above my head without having real Portuguese classes taken.

FYI: Many times I've requested a Pronunciation course from Duolingo.
Found one from FSI for French.

..(...)..

But if you want a real challenge: Try Busuu.

Their French A1 course gave me a difficult time and their exercises are much harder. See my posted review.

After 5 years I got placed at B1 lesson 1 for Portuguese on Busuu, but didn't complete any A1 or A2 lessons there, only the McGraw-Hill exam tests.
Also passed B1-2 exams, dunno why.

Busuu French A1 had a lot of difficult sentences, audio files, videos, reading texts, full text hearing passages, etc.
So I guess it's worth it to do A1 and A2 Portuguese reviews.

The French A1 placement test is difficult, the A1 exam is hardly possible to pass (C-) because of full listening with missing texts.
So play around with the Portuguese content and enjoy Non-TTS audio.

..(...)..

Side note:

Duolingo alone was not that great during my first 3-4 months because of all that eating/drinking/animal stuff and robotic/abstract sentences. Really got onto my nerves.

I hope you can keep going for a while...it will get better.
Just remember: It's a grammar course mainly.
Crowns update brought back a lot of earlier suspended sentences (higher user error rate).
New path seems to hide new content (there is a separate thread) as it goes only to level 3.

So the old PT tree didn't come up with practical phrases very early, not in 2016/17.
The Duolingo Portuguese course is NOT based on CEFR, unlike EN from PT.
Staff has taken a different direction now for newer courses.

Better add 2-3 Portuguese resources in parallel, else you won't push through Duolingo Portuguese and probably give up to soon.

And now this horrible path/snake pretty pointless content restructuring removing all dedicated grammar- and verb tense skills, leaving out all detailed html formatted Web T&N from the former volunteer contributor team: www.duome.eu/tips/en/pt

Hmm, after typing all this I strongly feel I need to move it somewhere else
Should have created a Pt-Br new Ai voices error thread (but can't remember all reported mispronounced details) or something similar about audio...do we have this thread somewhere already?

In this case could have easily linked to some of my old Portuguese threads (only living on the archives.ph for now) from the Duolingo community forum where you can see me struggling in the beginning...
time to recover them maybe this summer but other things are coming quickly after me in personal life, not going too well, so I won't make any promises when this can be achieved (next years).
Maybe I can at least post an archive link to one of them. Not every thread_id actually exists on duolingo.hobune.stream/

Updated:
04/07/2023 22:18 o'clock (Gmt+1) 3nd revision.
The earlier comment was posted too soon. I was still editing it and while submitting it, the Duome server logged me out.
Changed some minor typing errors on 04/07/2023.

[Debskii]

I usually get a very clear female voice but yesterday it suddenly changed to a poor quality robotic male voice (who annoyingly says every word as you type) and an equally poor quality woman’s voice interspersed with his. Has anyone else experienced this change in voices? It certainly hasn’t enhanced the app & I want to give up. Annoyingly, my partner still has the original voice. Help!!

[Khushi100]

Hey,
Considering the diverse languages involved, you might find AI audio translation tools beneficial for improving voice clarity across different languages.