Troubleshooting voice feedback

Pace Control app uses text-to-speech engine installed in Android to generate voice feedback messages. The app itself does not contain any voice recordings. Because of this it is very important to configure text-to-speech engine in a device to ensure that app works with it correctly. Incorrect configuration can result in no voice messages at all or some of them missing "randomly", low voice quality, incorrect grammar or speech intonation. If you experience any of these issues or just just want to protect yourself from them, follow the guidelines described here.

Pace Control app detects potential issues with text-to-speech engine configuration and warns users about them suggesting troubleshooting actions. However we still strongly recommend reading this page to better understand what exactly should be done and why.

Install Google Text-to-speech

Pace Control is developed and tested with Google Text-to-speech as a speech synthesis engine. This engine is guaranteed to work correctly with the app. On most phones the engine by Google is installed by default by the phone manufacturer, but this is not a general rule and there are phones in the market without this engine available out of the box, Because of this we recommend to verify whether you have it installed in your phone.

You can do it in one of the following ways:

Go to your phone settings and select enter Application manager. There should be "Google Text-to-speech Engine" on the list displayed on a screen. If you can find it, you have the right engine installed and Pace Control will use it to generate voice feedback messages.
Enter the page of the engine in Google Play (search "Google Text-to-speech" or just click this link). When you do it on your phone and you can see "Uninstall" option, it means the engine is installed and everything is okay. But if you see "Install" instead, it means that the engine is missing - click the button to install it.

When Google Text-to-speech Engine is installed, Pace Control will use it even if there is some other engine selected as the preferred one in the phone settings.

In case Google Text-to-speech Engine is not available, Pace Control app will try to use the preferred one. But we cannot guarantee that everything will work correctly.

Download voice data for your language

Note. We assume that potential problem with missing Google Text-to-speech engine is already solved and the engine is installed on your device.

Please, keep in mind that the actions described below may look a little bit different depending on Android version and text-to-speech engine version.

The engine uses language data to generate speech. Because this data can have significant size, only the most popular languages have them installed by default. Other languages do not have the data available. For these languages Google Text-to-speech Engine cannot synthetize speech directly, so it tries to solve the problem by communicating with Google servers on the Internet. It sends the request, server converts text to speech and sends it back to a phone. This usually works, but also means there are several disadvantages:

Restricted amount of data which can be exchanged between the phone and a server in a short period of time means that the quality of voice is much lower than it could be.
If an Internet connection is not available or too slow at the point in time when the voice feedback message is to be generated, the message will not be played at all.

To protext against there unpleasant consequences, you need to ensure that the text-to-speech engine has the voice data available locally. You can check if the data is installed and, in case it is not, install it as follows:

Go to your phone settings.
Select "Language and input" option.
On the next screen, select "Text-to-speech options".
Select "Google Text-to-speech Engine" as a "Preferred TTS Engine". Then click a settings icon for this engine (on the right, next to the engine's name).
Select "Install voice data" option.
Select the language you selected in Pace Control to generate voice feedback in.
The next screen will show voice sets for the selected language (for more popular languages there might be more than one set). If there is no "Download" option displayed next to the set names, everything is okay. Data is installed and Pace Control will be able to generate voice feedback messages even when offline.
If the download option is available, please, click the download icon and wait until the download completes and voice data is installed.

When finished, all the issues with voice feedback should be fixed.