“Speech Services by Google” is responsible for providing text-to-speech (TTS) and speech-to-text (transcription) capabilities for Android apps. Google is now rolling out a major TTS audio quality upgrade for 64-bit Android devices.
Android text-to-speech is getting “clearer, more natural voices” with a “significant side by side quality increase” touted. A new voice model and synthesizer for 64-bit devices is responsible for the improvement.
All of Google’s 421 voices across 67 languages have been upgraded. EN-US in particular also benefits from a new default voice that’s “built using fresher speaker data.” Google is also advertising another “drastic improvement” in combination with the main TTS upgrade.
Developers that already use Android TTS and the Speech Services by Google engine don’t have to do anything to get the upgrade as “everything will happen behind the scenes as your users will have automatically downloaded the latest update.”
This update will be rolling out to all 64 bit Android devices via the Google Play Store over the next few weeks as a part of the Speech Services by Google apk. If you are concerned your users have not updated this yet, you can check for the minimum version code ,210390644 on the package com.google.android.tts.
Old EN-US
New EN-US
Old ES-US
New ES-US
Old HI-IN
New HI-IN
Old PT-BR
New PT-BR
According to the Play Store listing, Speech Services TTS is leveraged by:
- Google Play Books to “Read Aloud” your favorite book
- Google Translate to speak translations aloud so you can hear the pronunciation of a word
- Talkback and accessibility applications for spoken feedback across your device
- …and many other applications in Play Store
More on Android:
- You can test Android 13’s predictive back gesture with the Pixel Phone app today
- Most Google apps don’t actually support Android 13’s themed icons outside of Pixel phones
- Google previews Android’s new emoji ahead of December launch, releases animated collection
- These Samsung devices are reportedly getting Android 13 by the end of the year
Add 9to5Google to your Google News feed.
google-news
Author: Abner Li
Source: 9TO5Google
