How to get the best audio quality in Mandarin sentence TTS

[Wan]

Hi everybody

Some questions regarding the different audio modules (only Mandarin) in Plecodict.
I own the extended audio male and female modules, and just the female TTS module.

Headword audio has a paid and a free version: The paid one is 487MB if you want both male and female recordings, as opposed to 18MB total for the free version. Simple enough, the difference in size suggests a better quality or wider range of recordings.

However, in sentence audio, the output I get when choosing “System Mandarin (Female)” is much clearer and more natural than with the “Pleco Mandarin (Female)” voice. It doesn’t make a difference whether I choose “Google Text-to-speech Engine” or “None” as System TTS Engine. Is that intended?
Also, I can’t seem to choose the male TTS System voice, as it doesn’t appear in the menu. Do I need to buy the “Pleco Mandarin (Male)” module to get “System Mandarin (Male)”?

Could someone please explain to me how to get the most natural sound in Mandarin example sentences TTS? I’m a bit confused about the number of addons, free and paid, word and sentence, male and female, and even more confused about the options in the settings
Thanks

 

[mikelove]

Yeah, that whole corner of Pleco is a mess at the moment - we're waiting for clarification on a few things (specifically, the addition of a few new TTS voices we're hoping to get soon and the availability of a Pinyin override option in Google TTS as exists now on iOS) before we restructure it to make more sense.

Anyway, "System Mandarin" is using the Google TTS voice, which some people do indeed prefer over ours. (others prefer ours - very much a matter of personal taste) Biggest problems with it are that it doesn't allow us to override its Pinyin transliteration, so it often gets words and single characters wrong, and it doesn't allow for following along with speech word-by-word, only sentence-by-sentence.

There is no male option with Google TTS - they don't offer one - but if you email support we can easily swap the female Pleco voice with the male for you, so you'd then be alternating between System Mandarin (Female) and Pleco Mandarin (Male).

 

[Barry]

Hello,
Regarding the issue of the addition of a few new TTS voices, mentioned above.

Is there any news on this subject?

 

[mikelove]

Not yet, delayed due to some staffing changes in the licensing department of the people we're licensing them from.

 

[Barry]

Thank you for the update.

Is there any estimated date when those TTS voices will be as add-on at Pleco?

 

[mikelove]

Nope, the delay is still ongoing so we'll only have a good idea about when they'll be available once things get worked out on the licensing end.