Speak text pitch & speed suddenly not working?

[chaoscreater]

I have a macro that use Speak Text to announce the weather everyday. Today, the voice pitch & speed is completely off, despite me making no changes in MacroDroid (or Android) for ages.

I've tried changing the pitch and speed and doing a test, but the output is the same, it doesn't speak faster or slower and the pitch is the same. I've rebooted my phone and tried again, same thing.

My MacroDroid is fully up to date and it doesn't automatically update, because I've configured Google Play to never update automatically. So it literally broke randomly as of today and I don't know why.

I've checked the System logs and sometimes I see the following error, sometimes I don'T:

Failed to initialize text to speech engine. Please check the text to speech engine is working properly via your phone's setting app. Desired language is not available: en

Regardless if I see the error or not, I get the same issue, where the spoken text is at the wrong pitch and speed.

It's not a problem with OpenTTS though, as MacroDroid should be able to control the pitch and speed of Speak Text, and it's not able to. I haven't tried reinstalling it, but I'd rather not to because it's a lot of extra work to get it set up (ADB permissions, Autostart, excluding it from MIUI battery saver, etc).

Any ideas why this is happening and how I can fix it?

 

[dsnz]

macrodroid did not update
but perhaps TTS was updated ??
abd what's Open TTS ??

 

[chaoscreater]

Nah, TTS didn't update and I don't know why I wrote Open TTS. I just meant Google TTS.

I think I found the issue. If I revert Google TTS from the current version (January 14th build) to a previous version, it's fine. I'm not sure why, but I guess MacroDroid isn't able to find the language that I'm using for my Google TTS. I'm using United Kingdom language in Google TTS and the voice option I chose is VII. If I click on the voice in Google TTS, I can hear a preview of what it sounds like, so it's perfectly fine. But in MacroDroid, it's unable to recognize it. I've never had this issue before though, so it's a bit strange. Oh well...

 

[dsnz]

it's the TTS then
oh well, yes it's a macrodroid issue too (forced), fiil a bug request

 

[MacroDroidDev]

I use English (UK) in my TTS engines on many devices and I haven't experienced what you are describing.

At this point I have no idea what the issue is but I'm pretty sure I can't change anything in MacroDroid that is going to help.

 

[Robert_in_Cambridge]

I have this problem also. I have many macros that speak text and all of them have abruptly stopped speaking. The 'play sound' action still works.

On another phone, which has not updated for a while, it still works.

The system log says "accessibility serivce must be enabled to access the foreground app package" but is is enabled. I have tried disabling and putting it back on.

Motorola E4 android 7.1.1

 

[MacroDroidDev]

The accessibility service error message is not related to the text to speech issue. Are you able to get it to speak text if you change spoken text language (i.e. try USA English) and/or change the output audio stream?

 

[Robert_in_Cambridge]

I just uninstalled MD and then reinstalled it. (I backed up all the macros first). Speak Text still does not work.

But I have discovered something: even in the phone settings "text to speech output" I get silence when I press "listen to an example". This suggests it is a phone problem, not MD.


Other perhaps related things:
I removed UK english and Norwegian (see below) but t2s has not come back to life.

A few weeks ago I changed my phone (for google maps) to use Norwegian. then a few weeks later I changed it back. I noticed that this also changed my keyboard. Perhaps this has something to do with the problem.



Moto E4 7.1.1

 

[Robert_in_Cambridge]

incidentally, google maps can still speak (english now)

 

[Robert_in_Cambridge]

changing the macrodroid setting of "spoken text audio stream" does not help. Nor does "Language to speak" i tried US english and then UK. Both are "fully supported" but don't work.

I guess the next thing to try is a factory reset. I can't do that this week because the phone is needed.

 

[Robert_in_Cambridge]

I fixed it!!!

I went to google play and found "Speech services by google Google LLC" and pressed "uninstall". Then I installed again.

Now it works.

 

[Robert_in_Cambridge]

More news: TTS stopped working again in macrodroid this morning. This time I went straight to google play and uninstalled/installed "Speech services by google Google LLC". Macrodroid then worked fine again.

While I was in google play I read the recent reviews of "Speech services by google Google LLC" and I see that hundreds of people are having problems with it.

 

[Jacob L]

I use this: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.reecedunn.espeak

Then Klatt variant 1

 

[Robert_in_Cambridge]

Thank you Jacob,

I don't fully understand what you are suggesting. I don't actually use google TTS, so I'm not looking for a replacement. But somehow google TTS messes with macrodroid's TTS abilities.

or do you mean that if I install ESpeak then MD will no longer be affected by google TTS because it will use ESpeak?

thanks for your help with this

 

[Jacob L]

Your device needs a TTS engine to speak, maps is a bit different.

If Google TTS is causing trouble, it may be better to use a different one. My favourite is Espeak

 

[dsnz]

I use this: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.reecedunn.espeak

Then Klatt variant 1

I installed to try it because good speech quality is very important for me
but where do we download language files ??

 

[Jacob L]

I installed to try it because good speech quality is very important for me
but where do we download language files ??

Mine installed them by default. Make sure to change it in system settings. You can access them from the right ... menu in Espeak

 

[dsnz]

Mine installed them by default. Make sure to change it in system settings. You can access them from the right ... menu in Espeak

menu at right imports from filesystem
so somehow must download these files from some site before importing... I guess

 

[dsnz]

maybe there is a confusion
the eSpeak you linked was last updated on 2015

there is also a eSpeak NG from some company and somewhat recently updated
and with source code on GitHub !! (though not mentioned in the play store page)

GitHub - espeak-ng/espeak-ng: eSpeak NG is an open source speech synthesizer that supports more than hundred languages and accents.

eSpeak NG is an open source speech synthesizer that supports more than hundred languages and accents. - espeak-ng/espeak-ng

github.com

which eSpeak do you use ?

Update: this source code is not certain it corresponds to this app, it certainly corresponds to the app in the next post

 

[dsnz]

I think I found at last
the correct eSpeak is at

eSpeak (Text-to-speech engine for Android. Based on the eSpeak engine.) - https://f-droid.org/packages/com.reecedunn.espeak