Journey voices deteriorated significantly (stopped respecting periods)

[devdev555777]

there's been some update that has made journey voices effectively unusable. The demos on the site and the actual synthesized voice up to 1-2 weeks ago didn't have this major issue.

Problem - journey (i.e. version F) voices do not respect end of sentence marks (i.e. periods). They rush over them like a high-speed train running too fast. this was not a problem as much before. Please undo the latest update or patch asap or add female version to casual voice.

[McMaco]

Hello devdev555777,

Welcome to Google Cloud Community!

Based on this demo, it seems the period was neglected due to a rush over reading like a high-speed train running too fast. But we have Text and SSML support under Key features which will help us to customize our speech with SSML tags that allow us to add pauses, numbers, date and time formatting, and other pronunciation instructions.

I hope the above information is helpful.

[Joschi]

Honestly that reads like a reply from a very bad LLM 😞 SSML seems not to be available for journey. neither is pitch or speed controll, and in defalt the voice is 1.5 times as fast as it should be by now...

[vxmabbu]

@McMaco We kindly request that you roll back the changes or add a new voice set that provides the same voices as the previous Journey voices before the update.

The new update's voice quality is extremely poor and unusable, even with proper SSML formatting. We did not expect such a decline in quality from a company like Google, especially without any prior notice. We have thousands of scripts ready for production, and this update was made overnight. Please ask your engineering team to spend just 10 minutes conducting an internal comparison test before and after the update. You will notice how terrible it sounds now.

[McMaco]

Hello @vxmabbu 

I suggest filing this as a feature request. Please note that I can't provide any details or timelines at this moment. However, you may keep an eye on the release notes for any latest updates or new features related to Cloud Text to Speech.

Contact Cloud Text to Speech Support: If none of the above solutions work, consider contacting Google Cloud Text to Speech support for further assistance. They might be able to provide specific insights into the behavior you're encountering.

[devdev555777]

So to emphasize what’s been said, we’re trying to help Google address what
is actually a self-created disaster. After this update this voice is
garbage.

[vxmabbu]

It's funny that this update isn't mentioned in the release notes either. It changed about two days ago, and there's no mention of it anywhere. Even small companies provide notice to their users well in advance—sometimes months or even a year before. How can Google push such a bad update without giving a basic heads-up? Journey Voices was the only good thing Google had compared to other competitors in the Gen AI space, and now it's become terrible. This isn't good, so please escalate this to the appropriate team before your competitors surpass you.

[Joschi]

Any news on this? I first discovered the voices on the preview page, then tested them over the api and then over the test page at https://cloud.google.com/text-to-speech?hl=en#demo
I was shocked how bad the actual quality is in "production" compared to the sampeles! 
Appart from the voice sounding differently in different sentences it rushed over "." more than over spaces... It seems like this problem exists now for several month and renders all the Journey voices pretty much useless for a text longer than 1 sentence. I noticed replacing a "." with a "-" helps a little some times...

Kind regards

[cppshane]

I've noticed similar behavior, how the demo result sounds vastly superior to the production API result, and only as of recently. Who knows, perhaps there is some cost cutting going on lol

[isabel_0c]

Is it expected that Journey Voices support the speed parameter and SSML features?

[kingjames6]

Please the journey option is no longer available on text to speech anymore. please this should be added back as quick as possible thanks

[Beyond]

We want journey back!!