I added this to the In Progress Mods in the FAQ.

Is this just for European units? To my knowledge, US can only use Jason as a guide. Am I wrong?

Samantha is a US voice...

Yep, you're wrong. The stock options for voice guidance in the US are Jason for none TTS and Samantha for TTS. Samantha sounds horrible, but if you don't use her, then you lose TTS.

I'm sorry guys, but all of these voices sound horrible!!! Why can't they use real sounding voices like the factory NAV units have?? I just don't get it...The BMW I drove with factory NAV in europe sounded just like a real woman sitting next to me talking...

OK, i got Jill working. I changed my test phrase to "Take the next right, route 422" instead of "have a nice trip..." and Jill still does the two things that bother me. When she says take the next right/left, she says it as if there is an exclamation point at the end...take next RIGHT! Grrr...and she still says "four hundred twenty two". So no real progress there. She does sound a little better though, but i didn't go for a real drive yet so I can't say how much better.

I'm sorry guys, but all of these voices sound horrible!!! Why can't they use real sounding voices like the factory NAV units have?? I just don't get it...The BMW I drove with factory NAV in europe sounded just like a real woman sitting next to me talking...

Unless the european BMW's are different, the iDrive does not have TTS. They are just prerecorded sound clips that are put together on the fly to get the right sentence, but they do not say the street name, exit name, etc. Most of them will still say highway numbers and exit numbers however (AVIC D3 for example, and that's how our BMW is). Thats what the Jason voice is, and it does sound alot better, but you loose the TTS.

Yep, you're wrong. The stock options for voice guidance in the US are Jason for none TTS and Samantha for TTS. Samantha sounds horrible, but if you don't use her, then you lose TTS.

How do you switch between the different voices? Is this only for the nav voice, or can you change Samantha as well? She is horrible..

well not for sure, I was in a new 2007 BMW with NAV in Germany (Dec 2006) - and it's NAV voice sounded like a real life person - not generated, and sound clips didn't have any noticable clipping together - I mean, it really sounded great!!! Plus, when it was changed from German to English, the English voice had a really nice accent...

How do you switch between the different voices?

RTFM? It's under Nav Settings.

well not for sure, I was in a new 2007 BMW with NAV in Germany (Dec 2006) - and it's NAV voice sounded like a real life person - not generated, and sound clips didn't have any noticable clipping together - I mean, it really sounded great!!! Plus, when it was changed from German to English, the English voice had a really nice accent...

Right, but like Yettavr6 was saying, the voices used in factory nav systems are not Text To Speech. If there is a set collection of words the voice must say (even if it's in the hundreds), those can be prerecorded and put together on the fly. It would be impossible to prerecord all of the street names out there (not to mention musicians, phone contacts, etc.).

There are much better TTS voices out there (Mac's system is the natural sounding I've ever heard), which is why I'm so intrigued by the work being done by Yettavr6.

Props to Yettavr6 - I'm using your reworked Samantha TTS file; sounds much better than the stock one! Thanks for improving this!

Any way you could post the Jill (Samantha) file for us to try?

I'm sorry guys, but all of these voices sound horrible!!! Why can't they use real sounding voices like the factory NAV units have?? I just don't get it...The BMW I drove with factory NAV in europe sounded just like a real woman sitting next to me talking...

Yea but is it TTS? TTS audio voices would take up a huge amount of storage space on the internal flash disk so the only option is to have an artificial voice which takes up very little storage space. And to my knowledge most factory nav systems are still DVD based with no TTS. And the BMW nav leaves allot more to be desired then just voices.

OK ... so I must be missing something here ...

I took the Samantha file and unzipped it to a folder I created called "TTS".

In that folder I see another folder labled "config", 2 bmp files called flag usa and big flag usa, a config file called info, and content.nng.

I put this into my unit and was able to get to the very last spot ... but the system wouldn't do anything with the SD card (outside of see that it was there).

Have I missed something?

btw, my unit is totally stock, no mods other than splash screen.

Don't unzip the Samantha TTS file - just move it as downloaded into the TTS folder on your SD card, then go through the "update TTS" procedure as outlined on P.1. The system reads these zipped files as is; that's why you don't unzip them when moving a .zip file onto the F-series.

Well guys im stuck for the time being. Something happened with my unit and its crashing every time i hit Settings. I was just in there earlier today to adjust the EQ, and haven't changed anything, so i'm not sure what happened. I'm leaving for vacation tomorrow so i don't want to mess around with it too much and kill it completely. I will post what i have so far for Jill in a few minutes...a little caught up on the election right now

Don't unzip the Samantha TTS file - just move it as downloaded into the TTS folder on your SD card, then go through the "update TTS" procedure as outlined on P.1. The system reads these zipped files as is; that's why you don't unzip them when moving a .zip file onto the F-series.

And this would be the reason these types of forums are so good.

Thanks very much for setting me straight.

I'll be trying this out later today.

So I tried out Samantha today. I can understand the horrible quality people were talking about. To my knowledge, TTS voices are used if you want to hear the road and highway names versus someone like Jason which sounds more natural, but has less details?

Yep, that's pretty much it, you could also read each post in this thread (especially mine about six posts up) and that would answer your question.

I think I prefer Jason over TTS. Though Samantha will always be used for VR. Do the updates for her TTS have any effect on the VR? Looks like most of the updates just correct her English for navigation.

I agree, I'll deal with not having streets announced for me just so I don't have to listen to that robot.

TTS voices can sound much better, although I'm not sure what the demand on resources is for the more human sounding systems.

Like you said, Macs have some of the best TTS voices. And they are generally very powerful, so I would indeed believe it takes alot to sound that natural.

I'm not sure the quality of Mac's TTS is a direct result of their hardware though, I think it may just be that they are the first ones to put in the energy to perfect it.

Check out this TTS system, it's pretty natural sounding with most words, and would be a TREMENDOUS improvement over what we have now.

Any new progress of this guys? BTW, i really appreciate your work : )

Is there a way we can screw Samantha altogether and use a different TTS voice? She sounds so horrible that i think there is almost no repair for her, unless you guys can make her sound sexy for those long and lonely road trips.

I saw a Katt voice and a few others posted a while ago?