Why do Macs and PCs have different voices in Voice Over?

Chauncey Dupree
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March 11, 2009
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According to the video below, the Shuffles that sync Mac and PCs have different VoiceOver voices.   The Mac voice is a man's voice.  The PC's is a woman's. 

Why? 

Oh, and can you use these as tie clips?  Would that be weird?

Comments (21)

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | March 11, 2009 - 7:09am

I see no video...

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | March 11, 2009 - 7:10am

Surely iTunes must make the voiceover elements as small sound files that the iPod shuffle just attaches to the start of each audio file.

As the voice over on Mac is better than PC this is why they are different.

Not sure this is correct but it makes sense!!

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | March 11, 2009 - 7:10am

I'm guessing it's because the voice is generated by the OS. Macs and PCs have different voices for reading, and those voices are loaded on to the iPod.

Lee (not verified) | March 11, 2009 - 7:12am

The different voices are because iTunes generates the audio and puts it onto the shuffle. This feature first debuted with the nanos last fall. On the Mac, it uses the Alex voice engine, on Windows, it uses Windows' built in voice engine.

macsoftwarelist.com (not verified) | March 11, 2009 - 7:12am

Only a woman would buy a PC? Or maybe only a man would buy a PC and he wants to hear a woman's voice?

MacSoftwareList.com

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | March 11, 2009 - 7:17am

I think it's beacuse it hasn't a real voice over, but it uses the Mac included voices (the default is Alex) when you sync it with a mac and the Windows ones when you sync it with a PC

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | March 11, 2009 - 7:18am

The Mac voice is the voice of Alex, which was an enormous improvement in voice over technology that was launched with Leopard. Take a look on your hard drive for the sizes of the voice files and see how much bigger Alex is. So that is why its specific to Mac. The woman's voice is probably leveraging something within windows, or at the very least a much smaller voice that might ship with the windows version of iTunes. I'm not positive on the PC side, but I'm 100% sure about the voice of Alex.

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | March 11, 2009 - 7:30am

Subliminal message on PC voice saying "BUY A MAC...BUY A MAC....get a life....BUY A MAC".

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | March 11, 2009 - 7:31am

That's exactly what it is. The tracknames and things are generated as sound files on the respective computers and synced to the shuffle, which just plays them like any other MP3. If you change the standard voice on the Mac, the voice on the Shuffle changes, too.

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | March 11, 2009 - 7:36am

Must be iTunes that is creating the voiced title and adding it to the shuffle as an accompanying mp3 "song" per real song.
It uses the platform voice "reading" software.

valgonzarp (not verified) | March 11, 2009 - 7:55am

It should use "Ballmer's Shout" voice on Windows.

Kev Orng (not verified) | March 11, 2009 - 8:25am

according to the samples on the product page, the PC voice is the same as the Tiger voice.

Only Leopard users get Alex

TheDisneyBoy (not verified) | March 11, 2009 - 8:25am

It's because only sissies buy Windows machines. Real men use Macs.

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | March 11, 2009 - 8:28am

Using a tie clip is always weird.

Don't do it!

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | March 11, 2009 - 8:50am

that if you play the voice overs backwards, you hear satanic messages.

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | March 11, 2009 - 9:23am

you can change it in the speech settings anyway.

Benjamin Dobson | March 11, 2009 - 9:49am

I'm guessing Alex refuses to use Windows.

Alex W (not verified) | March 12, 2009 - 11:54am

You bet your ass I refuse to touch Windows!

ulfoaf (not verified) | March 11, 2009 - 9:50am

Uses a female voice because using Windows is a bitch!

wow gold (not verified) | March 12, 2009 - 2:05am

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9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | March 15, 2009 - 7:28am

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