IVONA blocked by Voice Manager even though it's functional otherwise
The version 15.1.7 app update (Aug 24, three updates ago) contained "a lot of code gymnastics to make the obsolete IVONA TTS voices work in @Voice" and "Trying to detect and suggest solutions for damaged TTS voices installed on user's device".
(I'm one of those holdouts who cannot let go of IVONA, because for me the US-English "Kendra" still hasn't been matched in quality by any voice on offer at the alternative TTS engines by Acapela, Cereproc, and others. For me the most important quality is that I can absorb text content at high speeds without getting my attention strained by sloppy mispronunciations, sound artifacts, or treble spikes. For German TTS I found Acapela's "Klaus" to be superior to IVONA's "Marlene" in that regard, so it's not because I'm just overly sentimental or anything like that.)
IVONA actually still seems to be functional on my Android 7.1 device and I almost never had any issues using it in @Voice with the Voice Manager before the v15.1.17 update. But since the update, when Voice Manager is enabled and the next article in line is English (after a non-English one), @Voice will throw an error popup saying "This voice is not working correctly. We suggest selecting a different one, or reinstalling this voice correctly. [OK]"
When I turn off the Voice Manager by switching to "Use only the system default voice" and selecting IVONA in the system settings, @Voice will use it without issue. So it seems that IVONA is falsely being detected as damaged by the Voice Manager in my case. Or what else could be the problem?
I realize that IVONA has been discontinued as an app since 2016 and that @Voice is in no way responsible for compatibility issues that come up in newer Android versions, so this is *not* a complaint or bug report. I'm just trying to figure out if something can be done to make it work with the Voice Manager again.
So right now I have to switch TTS engines manually each time the language of my added articles changes, instead of having the Voice Manager do it automatically (which I find super useful). One solution might be if you offered an extra checkbox option to deactivate the damaged TTS detection.
I installed and reinstalled IVONA using preserved apk and obb files. I'm pretty sure the file permissions are ok.
I have root access to my device, so I can take a deeper look under the hood if you're interested in some details or want to have me try something out.
post edited by zeco - 2018/09/10 05:52:50