MS Word Read Aloud voice changes tone

I had a great voice yesterday and the months before, now i'm presented with three rubbish Microsoft versions. I too use this this to proof read, a hiccup in the speech usually denoting a mistake in grammar. I want the voice I had yesterday!

I guess the bottom line is that Read Aloud is (whether MS acknowledge it or not) still a beta feature, Not Ready for Prime Time, so some bugs are to be expected. This is unfortunate, but certainly the whole concept of the feature is a very complex one.

Thank you so much for the help and transparency, Suzanne! I know they play around with these things. As someone else mentioned, this might have even leaked through a patch. Not sure if you can speculate, but do you suppose it’s possible they’re beta testing the voice to gauge for consumer reaction?

I'm a big user of Edge's read aloud for PDFs over the years and I've learned some things through experience. First is that Clara, the Canadian, is the best. It's not the most natural sounding but it has the least quirks and is very easy on the ears. When I'm in a mood for entertainment I'll use a South African voice but I never use the American voices. Second is that what voice you get depends on your internet connection. The natural voices are processed in the cloud, so your text is sent up and the audio is sent down. If you go offline or if your connection is laggy, you'll experience shifts to the older voice with the same name. The new ones have the lilt everybody here hates, which is a clear sign that we're all old as the valley girl inflection has become normal in much of the country below a certain age. The new voices are very good; at times I forget it's not a person reading an audio book. It's the accent I don't like, which is why I choose foreigners.

i can give you work around.

Copy your text into notepad save it as .txt file.

open edge and drag that file into edge. at end of address bar is readout loud.

install Microsoft Jenny natural TTS in windows 11 speech settings and you can pick TTS voice in edge to get same result.

Track your text in Word when you listen in edge and correct mistakes.

its off in word you can pick male / femal thats it. when you use that feature in crome you can pick any language pack voice you have installed and force it to that voice.

If you're in the US and have your preferred language set to English (US), turn on your Read Aloud tool and hear it for yourself.

I am, and I have, and I use Read Aloud extensively. I also added Microsoft Aria, which is supposedly more natural sounding. The voices recognize basic punctuation.

The voices in Word can be adjusted for speed. Even a slight adjustment can make a big difference in how they sound.