Navigation Voices
 

I've been playing with the 7 day trial of the wayfinder software, and it's not bad. It's not as good as tomtom, but considering my windows mobile pda (that I only use for tomtom) is dying, wayfinder is cheaper and more convenient.

I can live with most of it's quirks, but the one thing that is really bugging me is the voices. All the "english" voices are american, and I really want british voices. Does anyone know if there are any third party voices available. It's really distracting/annoying to hear "at the traffic circle (???) take the third exit (twang!)". Hardly a major issue, but still an annoying one.

Ta

Re: Navigation Voices
 

Strange. I have a distincly British accent for both the trial period and when I paid the money for the licence.

What is really annoying about the British voice is his bloody patronising manner! At the end of the journey he says "There that wasn't so bad was it". After a few journies the guy is really pissing me off!

Ahh well.

Re: Navigation Voices
 

I've tried sara and christopher, and the other options had distinctly non-british names. sara seemed very american, and I don't like male voices for sat nav. think I got too used to Jane from tomtom :)

Re: Navigation Voices
 

carinna du plessis is a british womans voice

Re: Navigation Voices
 

thanks, will give her a try. I suppose I should have guessed that from the, err, French name :p

Re: Navigation Voices
 

i thought that as well , so i never selected it , then my gf (at the time) who is english said that was a common name in england

Re: Navigation Voices
 

Well, I'm English, and while I could believe that Carina may be a british name, I've never heard of anyone native called "du plessis" (or anything similar)

Re: Navigation Voices
 

du Plessis is common in South Africa and Carina is Souh African. Sa is a 12 hour flight from the UK and the accent is nothing like English.
Carina calls a roundabout or rotary a 'road circle'.
English she is not. I know Americans don't get taught much in the way of geography but come on SA Is not even in the northern hemisphere :-)

Re: Navigation Voices
 

my download of carina failed anyway, as I just get silence :) Todd is fairly british though, he'll do for now. and all the english voices I have tried call a roundabout a "traffic circle" or "road circle" WTF!? that's worse than "island" which some brits use.

Re: Navigation Voices
 

I emailed Wayfinder about this and got a typical computer world useless reply which was very helpful in tone and told me nothing.
Basically, as far as they're concerned if it speaks English and isn't American, it's British.
Ah, if only Dick Van Dyke were around to record these traffic instructions in authentic cockney!

Re: Navigation Voices
 

that's the plight of being non-American isn't it. an extension of the BBC's notion that nothing actually happens in the UK outside of the south-east :)

Re: Navigation Voices
 

I'm using Christopher. At least he knows what a roundabout is. Traffic Circle ???

But I do miss Yoda from TomTom. I really liked him because he spoke the instructions backwards. Which on TomTom was actually a bonus.


e.g.

Instead of
Please take the next left (important info last).

You got

Next left you must take (Important info first).

anyone got Yoda for WayFinder :)

Zuber

Re: Navigation Voices
 

At least extracting the TomTom voices to .ogg format is quite easy:
http://tomtom.gps-data-team.com/tomtom_voices.php

No you only have to figure out how to create Wayfinder voices based on this. :)

Re: Navigation Voices
 

I used to use Joanna Lumpy. A proper british woman's voice. And john cleese was good too.

Re: Navigation Voices
 

I see the voice files are in ogg format so in principal it should be possible to roll your own. Or import Tom Tom's?
I might have a shot at this some time unless anyone knows it won't work.

Re: Navigation Voices
 

that would be really neat, to be able to have Jane back :)

Re: Navigation Voices
 

I'd like to have Jane back too, but I think she may be a little upset that I ditched her for Christoper.
I used her on the Palm one last time this week but instead of telling me nicely to turn right at the end of my road as usual, she told me that she was no longer speaking to me and sulked the rest of the way.

Re: Navigation Voices
 

I just tryied extracting some tom tom voices and have just renamed the tomtom files and copied the oggs into the navcore voice folder. Have been using the carina du plessis folder which i don't use, and can say it does work!!

Have only replaced a few files so far but looks promsing :).
Also been using the yoda sounds which are much louder than the orginal ones, the only problem is that i can't find any sounds to replace the nogps or speedcam alerts but aleast no more ruddly traffic cirles!

When i have some more time i'll finish replacing them all and then try it out on the road.

Re: Navigation Voices
 

I've extracted the some of Jane's voice too but haven't done anything with them because they express things differently and I wanted to be sure I had all the instructions correctly replaced.
Tomorrow I'm going to get my daughter to record a full set of Carina's instructions so if it works out, I'll make them available.
I can do quite a good Ian Paisley impression - I may do a set just for fun.