Allroad said:
...tbh i find the voice hard to understand when it announces road names it does not sound like the name of the road...
Are you aware that there have been many, many updates to the voice software released in the past year?
When the 27xx series came out, it was the first time that Garmin had used text to speech (TTS) technology. The initial release of the TTS voice provided a voice that spoke in 'American English', and there were lots of little bugs to be ironed out.
Over the last year, the voice generation software has been greatly improved, and there have been no less than a dozen (free) upgrades to the voice software. You can now choose from an American English voice (the original), or a British English voice (male or female), or Australian English voice (male or female), or any one of a dozen different European language voices, including the newest release, Flemish.
If you own a Garmin GPSR that has text to speech capability, I highly recommend that you download and install the
Garmin WebUpdater application, then hook your GPSR up to your computer and go through the fully automated updating process. Be aware that there will be TWO STEPS to the web update process if you have a TTS GPSR. The first step will be updating the unit software (same as what it has been like for the past 10 years). The next step - which the WebUpdater takes you to automatically - will be choosing do download new or updated versions of the voices. Once the first step - updating unit software - has completed, watch carefully for a prompt on the computer screen that says "There may be other updates available for your GPSR - do you want to review them?" This is the prompt that takes you to the voice updates.
If you choose 'yes' when presented with that question, you will then see a list of all the different voices that are available for your GPSR. Choose the ones you want. Here are some guidelines to help save you time:
1) Voices that have full TTS capability will always have a 'Name' associated with them - for example,
'Voice, British English-Daniel (TTS)' or
'Voice, British English-Emily (TTS)'. It is NOT necessary for you to download the un-named voices if your GPSR has TTS capability. A voice with a name can also provide 'turn left at the next road' instructions, however, a voice without a name cannot provide 'turn left at High Street' instructions.
2) Although you cannot download 'too many' voices, be aware that it is a bit of a waste of time to download 12 different languages unless you are a real polyglot. Also, because the voices reside on the same area of memory that is set aside for user maps, if you download 150 megabytes of voices (12 different languages), you have just kissed goodbye to 150 megs of storage space that you could have used for user uploaded maps, MP3 tracks, or whatever.
Hope this information is useful.
Michael
