Program to Customize TTS Voices

This is a Garmin problem. BR is Business Route, Br is branch. Look at the display - all Business routes show as Br and not BR.

I forget who it was that posted this, but change Recalculating to a period or a colon. The unit just does it without getting all snotty about it.

Edit your .VPM file with a Hex Editor. Make a search for "Express". You should find it in a unique location. Replace "Express" by "EEEEEEE". That should solve your problem.

For branch, the change would be a bit more complicated since you need to disable the Br abbreviation are replace it by something else. Did you look at TTS_Speech_Doctor on my site. I think there is a fix for that (or the opposite...)

One *really* bizarre quirk of the Zumo is that if you switch to a British English voice instead of the American English, POIs show up on the map at 0.5mi zoom instead of 0.3mi zoom. I cannot explain this behavior, but I have verified that it happens.

This suggests there is some setting in the VPM file that can affect the visibility of POIs on the map. Do you know what that might be? Is there any way to tweak this? I really, really want to see POIs on the map out to 20+mi radius.

Thanks in advance,
Jeff

Sorry. I have never seen this. I really do not understand how this is possible. I may guess this is a Locale issue or simply a bug, but that is far from getting a fix.

Even though you continue to show distance in miles, some of the internal calculations may change from miles to KM. It's the right ratio - 0.6 mi per KM.

The interesting thing is that it changes irrespective of any other locale setting (ie, kilometers vs miles). There must be some flag in the voice file that triggers this "bug".

Do you have any formal documentation for the voice file format? Or if you have any backdoor contacts at Garmin, could you press them on this issue? I know a lot of people that would be very happy to have their Zumo magically able to view POIs at higher zoom levels...

Thanks,
Jeff

Have wife convinced its a self-learning feature of her Garmin. It learn't her name from the registration and berates her because she keeps missing turns. She uses the Britt voice so I programmed it"Lost again love, shall we try again Munchkin". It drives her crazy trying to figure out how it did this.

That's the BEST story!

Gary Hayman

Do you have any formal documentation for the voice file format?

No. Changing the text strings is very easy and does not require much knowledge. I can scan the TTS voices and try to see for some text strings to change.

Or if you have any backdoor contacts at Garmin, could you press them on this issue?

No contact. They do not talk to me....

Edit: Are we talking TTS voices or non-TTS voices? Please give me the detailed voice name.

Ah, I was afraid this might be the case. It's what I would have done.

I haven't done a lot of experimentation with different voices, but when I switched to British Emily (TTS) my POI icons started rendering at 0.5mi zoom instead of the usual 0.3mi zoom. I was previously using the female American English TTS voice, Jill I think (I don't have the unit in front of me at the moment), and switching back to this voice rendered POI icons at max 0.3mi zoom.

Pretty crazy. I found this out from someone on the zumoforums.

Jeff

The GPS may be using the Language ID in the TTS voice. Changing the Language ID to a different value may trigger this effect.

Open the Emily TTS voice with a Hex Editor. Search for "lang_enum" (no double quotes. You will find this string:

<lang_enum>14</lang_enum>

Replace the 14 (language ID for British English) for 00 (0 is the language ID for US English)

<lang_enum>00</lang_enum>

Note: If 00 does not work, try " 0" (space + 0 with no double quotes).

There may be other things I would try, but this seems the most likely to work.

If the POIs are not at 0.5mi anymore, you know what triggered the bug in the GPS.

Turbo

I wish I had thought of that! Way to go!!!

Tired or hearing "Recalulatin"?

I just made an update to TTSVE v2.90.

Changes from v2.89 to v2.90:

•Fixed an issue with new British Emily v2.40

Link in post #1 is till good.

for all your time and effort in maintaining and upgrading all your programs, it's much appreciated.

I use that field blank, and hear nothing. Seems to recalculate faster as well.

Interesting. I do not remember if it was a 255 or a 255W, but someone reported a blank field was not working for him. It has to be gps dependant because it works for you and it worked for me as well in the past.

I know also there is an empty field somewhere in the list. This empty field is called between each voice segment. If you put something there, put something very small otherwise you will become crazy...

A period (.) will work if the empty field doesn't. It's a minor pause. Both my 775T, and 3790T honour the empty field where 'Recalculate' used to exist.

I believe it was Juggernaught that made me look at totally removing Recalculating from the vocabulary. I also changed Drive to the highlighted route to Road trip? I love road trips!

Yes, TTS Editor is almost as useful as EPE.

There is a new Jill. TTSvoice editor shows garbage in the text area instead of recalculate, etc. I am using 2.90

I just found the same thing. Hopefully it's is fixable.

yep it looks like chinise charecters so they have changed something again, kinda strange they change a format in a voice file ?
i have a 1450lm

Glad I have not updated lately. Any idea what the fix is?

Bob Dobbs? Is that you?

Works great on my NUVI40.

It's nice when she says "ok, you're the boss" instead of recalculating.

Use a space instead of a phrase. That way the unit just redraws a route and you don't get tired of listening to whatever phrase you put in. You may think the phrase is "cute" or "funny", but the 10th time it repeats...

Thanks!

I downloaded your latest version 290 and have my garmin plugged in via USB to the Pc and opened the American Jill VPM file with the TTS editer and all the choices are gibberish. Can't find Recalculating.

I have a 3790T and have used the program before and did change the voice to something I liked but did an upgrade and lost the change.

As I said all the text of voices is strange characters.

Can you help, please?

Thank you

changed the format for the encryption on the voice file.

I like that! I used: Okay then. Let's try it your way.

I get lots of comments on it, I forget about it until someone riding with me yells, "What did that thing just say?!?!?"

I love it!

With Karen, I have to spell the words phonetically. For instance. 'magnificent' needs to be spelled 'magnifficent' in order to be pronounced correctly for Americans.

I changed Karen's phrase from "Please find the highlighted route" (or something) to "David, you magnificent beast, lets take a ride"

I got the biggest eyeroll from my wife in our 32+ years of marriage. Plus an order to change it.

Still worth it!

every time we tell it to follow a route and she starts with "Road trip? I just love road trips."

I'm going to use this tomorrow for our trip. Thanks!

Anyone know how to make Karen appear to ask a question?
Turboccc says in his instructions "The exclamation mark "!"and the interrogation mark "?" sometimes do something."

Maybe I need to do a phonem? Anyone had experience with these?

Works well on my Nuvi360. Thanks!

The normal punctuation marks do cause the effect you are looking for. Question marks do make the voice sound as if it is stating a question, pauses happen with commas and also colons (which is why I use them in my GPX files). Exclamation points are a little more tricky, there isn't much change in inflection. I believe there was a rather inclusive write-up on GPSPassion a few years back that covered a lot of what your asking. I haven't gone much past the basics mentioned in this post, and I have no real idea exactly where I did see the write-up.

The question mark and exclamation marks have no effect on my 40 with Karen. The rest of the stuff, commas and periods, work OK.

Of course I've got the 885T and use Jill.

My 40 can't get Jill. Booooo

[quote}My 40 can't get Jill. Booooo

I updated software on my 1490t to 6.10. I was disappointed to lose my voice edits. The new Jill has Chinese symbols instead of American text.
I copied the old Jill back to my unit. Then I put the edits back in for Recalculating and Please drive to highlighted route.

and

On an American voice? Are you sure they aren't just unprintable characters from a non-ASCII code page?

:}

Garmin has changed something with Jill 3.0 voice so it no longer works with TTSVoiceEditor. You must use V2.90 to modify the voices.
I had emailed turboccc (author) some months back but never received a reply nor has the program been updated. The current version remains at 2.90.

You indicate "You missed the turn", I'm assuming that was modified for recalculating.

The newer units no longer say recalculating and just modify the route if a wrong turn was made.

Many are happy that recalculating was removed, personally I liked that feature since I could customize the audio and it quickly advised me I screwed up

I did not like the "Recalculating" so I changed it.

On my 660 and 775T I also changed the recalculating
to "wrong turn you idiot", using Jill V2.90.
Can't do it on my 2460LMT since recalulating has been eliminated, on that unit I have V3.0

Idiot is one of many nicknames my wife calls me, so to save her from reminding me I made a mistake I let Jill do it.

There's no "Recalculating" ont eh 2460LMT??? I the the 2360LMT and it had it. Just curious, what is there in place of Recalculating???