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8.7.5 Understand Voice Adjustments ¶

Change one field at a time and compare with B. Portable controls are not measurements in Hertz or decibels, and equal values may sound different on different engines. Most numeric fields use integer levels zero through nine; Relative Rate is the exception.

• Relative Rate ranges from -20 to 20. Negative requests slower speech, positive faster, and zero leaves base rate unchanged. Engine-relative steps are not words per minute. A stronger contextual value replaces rather than adds to this one.
• Average Pitch requests lower or higher overall pitch. Start with a small contrast between voices for related content.
• Pitch Range requests less or more pitch variation; supported low settings can sound monotone and higher settings more varied.
• Stress requests emphasis according to the engine’s implementation.
• Richness changes tonal character or fullness where supported. Compare samples rather than treating it as volume.
• Gain changes output level: five is unchanged, lower reduces, higher raises.
• Pan requests left at zero, centre at five, and right at nine where supported; output arrangement also matters.
• Low-pass Amount and High-pass Amount remove high and low frequencies, respectively. Zero is neutral and nine strongest.
• Reverb adds reverberation, Echo delayed repeats, and Chorus a doubled voice. Zero disables each; higher values increase it.
• Portable Fallback Family, where offered, is a compatibility hint. Use Physical voice for an installed choice. Family is outside complete Omnivox voice preview.

In shared settings, d or blank input requests adapter default and u undoes it. For a physical choice, i means use the shared value. Zero is explicit in either context. The standard-default palette chooses the collection, Automatic delegates physical selection, and adapter default delegates one adjustment: they answer different questions.

Filter amount scales apply to arrows and numeric input in the common editor. Zero is the neutral cutoff; blank requests adapter default. Existing saved styles retain their sound and stored low-pass cutoff values keep their original meaning.

Neutral values are named: gain five unchanged, pan five centre, and zero reverb, echo, or chorus disabled. Chorus adds bounded doubled-voice modulation without changing speech duration or marker positions. Omnivox applies it to buffered audio and reports unsupported routes. Portable levels are translated into adapter-specific values.

The standard palette includes telephone, combining high-pass and low-pass filtering for a narrow-band sound on buffered Omnivox engines without replacing the physical voice or changing duration/markers. Preview it in Voice Palettes or Workbench before assignment. Adapters without post-synthesis filtering keep the style but cannot apply those filters.

For overall Omnivox pitch contrast (omnivox-average-pitch-contrast), open C-e H v o and select Omnivox pitch contrast. Shift-left/right adjusts by 0.1; RET enters an exact value from zero to two. The default 0.5 gives gentler distinctions, 1.0 restores historical contrast, and zero neutralises average pitch. This scales all average-pitch levels without changing individual named-voice definitions; other backends are unaffected.

Changes refresh logical-voice registration for subsequent previews, structured speech and legacy inline voices. Compare familiar content, then restore the previous value if needed. The menu’s w saves both contrast and comparison labels through Customize; it does not save a voice or palette.