Find Your Voice, Find Your Destination with Garmin® Voice Studio™

This looks to be very promising indeed!! I'll have to give it a go....

Great article!

From the Garmin site

aera™ series
GPSMAP® 620 & 640
nüvi® 200-series
nüvi 205-series
nüvi 500-series
nüvi 700-series
nüvi 705-series
nüvi 800-series
nüvi 1200-series
nüvi 1300-series
nüvi 1400-series
nüvi 1600-series
nüvi 5000
zūmo® 660

I would love to have a sultry female's voice on my unit, but I don't know anyone with such a voice.

I assume that once the use of the program becomes more wide spread, making voices available to others will become more common place.

Poi Factory has POI files, Icons and Alert sounds. Do we need a new category "Nuvi Voices"?

Turboccc gave us his Non TTS Voice Editor a year ago (http://www.poi-factory.com/node/19580) and there never seemed to be much interest in it. I think most people want TTS voices to get street names.

Yes, you're right. It doesn't look like TTS, which makes it much less useful. Pretty much negates my post above about trading voices too...

I don't have a mic, so it'll be interesting to hear if anyone gives it a try and see what the program can do.

Yeah I don't see how they could possibly create "record your own TTS voice". Would be pretty sweet though!

The one I'd love is the Homer Simpson voice, but that's only on TomTom's.

The article states "Voice Studio does not provide text-to-speech recordings."

always skips the 600 series!

it would work well for the non tts models

Nice application! It's about time Garmin does it instead of letting guys like me develop programs for the users.

I will try it next week end if I have a chance. I am curious to see if Garmin does anything to trim the audio clips to ensure proper speech continuity between the promts.

I tried it, and it's very user friendly. The recordings can be "Trimmed" to eliminate unnecessary and/or prolonged pauses between words. There are about 65 words and phrases (in the American English selection) to be recorded which doesn't take long at all, and then you can "Test" them to see how well they work together. The resulting voice prompts may be somewhat different in use than what the TTS voice user is accustomed to, however.

I hope to heaven my partner doesn't see this!!! That is all I would need...her nagging me/backseat driving even when she is not in the car!!!!!!

This is pretty exciting!

I just installed it on my WinXP Home SP3. Installation completed successfully but when I clicked VoiceStudio, this is what I got:

The application failed to initialize properly (0xc0000135). Click OK to terminate the application.

See if this link helps http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/freeway/92216-solved-applica...

no TTS available blows...

I just checked my notebook, .NET 1.1 isn't installed. That must be it. Garmin should mention .NET framework in the system requirements.

I have a c550. Any indication that it will accept the voice studio program changes? Maybe I should call a Garmin Tech.

What makes this really nice is that you can title it your own name and then you can pick that voice instead of using the English_American like other voices use.

Well, certainly have to thank Garmin for the fun free application! Rather lame though once you've grown accustomed to using TTS voices. Sometimes when streets are very close to one another, it's nice to know & hear the street names.

No OS X version that I see.

No OSX and no TTS make this a non-starter for me.

I don't know. When I don't like the directions and start calling the GPS names, it will be like I'm yelling at myself. On the other hand, I might be lulled into a false sense of security and ignore "common" sense. Then I'll be driving into a lake, or down a snow-blocked road.

I tried it out tonight for my 200W. It worked well and I tested it out with the GPS in Simulator mode. It'll be fun to road test, as I changed "recalculating" to "D'oh! Let's try it again!"

This appears to be an interesting product. I will have to give it a try.

Has anyone actually tried Voice Studio with the nuvi 660? Why would it work with all the other models but not with that one? Is there something so different about it? Seems that a voice file is a voice file, no?

Correct. Voice Studio works on every non-TTS voices. It will work on your 660 no problem.

Hi NickJr,

Just to let our Mac community know that, at the present time, Garmin® Voice Studio™ is a PC only application...

From Garmin:
Garmin Voice Studio is compatible with IBM-compatible PCs running Windows® XP Service Pack 2 or later operating system. Garmin Voice Studio does not provide text-to-speech recordings.

Hopefully, Garmin will unveil a version of the Garmin® Voice Studio™, for the Macintosh operating system, in the very near future.

Regards,

Tailspin

Nüvi 670 & 880
Mac Pro & OS 10.5.7

The only reason I can think that Voice Studio would not work on a 660 unit is that I believe thats it's not a "Nuvi" series unit, which could account for its "non-compatability". The 660's software could be different enough not to except it. Just a thought.

not really sure I see myself getting much from this. As others pointed out no text to speech is a big barrier for me. Also, I'm rather happy with Emily...

I like Emily and Karen.

It sucks!!

I tried it, has some trouble getting it to work but after the third try, it finally worked. I must say that after listening to myself, without TTS, I would never use this program. Is sounds so "canned" and 'choppy'. I'm afraid I will have to give this a thumbs down.

I ran the program and put in my voice but I can't find the voice files it created. They aren't in the program folder or in my documents folder, at least not anywhere I can see. I even ran a full scan of the computer for all files modified in the last hour and came up with nothing.

Any ideas? I assume if I try to just connect my nuvi 660 it will tell me "not supported" so I was hoping to install it by physically copying the voice file.

It says it works with 200 series, does that include 250W or not? i tried it gives me an error

is part of the 200 series which Gamin states is compatible with their voice studio so it should work.

I used one of turbocc's programs to change "recalculating" to "OK, we'll do it your way" some time ago. I also changed "Drive to the highlighted route" to "Where are we?".

That really paid dividends a while back driving through a completely reconstructed junction when, after a series of "OK, we'll do it your way"'s, Daniel finally plaintively complained "Where are we?"

Pretty neat program.

Well i rbouted the device and it worked. thank