Forum Discussion
Storyline AI Voice - decreasing volume
Hey SamBarnard-98a4,
Sorry to hear that AI Voiceovers in Storyline are not playing back as expected.
I tested this on my end using a 1min34sec track, dictated by Laura. After previewing and publishing to Review, the volume remained consistent throughout playback. I'm happy to help troubleshoot this further and have some follow-up questions to start:
- Are you noticing this issue across all published output (LMS, Review, etc.), or is it specific to one format?
- Do you see this behavior among all voices? We are tracking a Storyline bug that causes this same behavior when the Rachel voice is used.
If a repair of your Storyline installation doesn't improve the behavior, do you mind uploading one of the affected .story files so we can take a closer look? If you prefer to share that privately, please connect with us through a support case.
Hi,
Thank you for the response.
I was using the voice Max - Elearning and Documentary when I noticed this behaviour and I did see a thread once before that identified this behaviour as well (don't recall seeing a specific voice being mentioned).
Currently I've not bothered publishing the content because the voice over is decreasing in volume - I'm not going to waste time publishing something with a known issue that I will have to still fix.
I have just tested this again in a fresh project file with a different script from Wikipedia's article on Lorem Ipsum - see attachment. Afraid I cannot share the original build where this problem occurred as it contains company IP.
Two things I did not mention in my original post:
- The behaviour was worse and really noticeable on slides where I used line breaks to separate out paragraphs of the script, especially in instances of 3 or more 'paragraphs'. It still happened without these breaks, it was just more noticeable with them in.
- I was using the multilingual v2 model as it sounds better and I have more control, especially for speed, than v3. V3 is lacking this control and needs it.
Repair of Storyline has not resolved the issue.
Kind regards,
Sam
Hey SamBarnard-98a4,
You're welcome. Thanks for following up and sharing a sample file.
After testing your example, I had the same experience. The audio greatly decreased during playback. I understand that you've been using the Max voice. Unfortunately, that is one of the voices that was retired last month. Behavior such as this can be expected when using a voice that is no longer supported by Storyline.
Using your same script and paragraph formatting, I ran a test with a different voice (Matilda). On Slide 1.2, I did not observe any volume issues during preview or when publishing to Review 360. I've attached a copy of the file I used in my testing, with my reply.
We understand losing access to certain voices can be disruptive, and I'm sorry if this has been slowing you down. Moving forward, I suggest using a different voice in your build if possible.
Please let me know if you need anything else!
Hi,
In the interface for AI voice, "Max" was not identified in that as being no longer available. Those that had been retired/removed were identified as such and could not be selected. I did note that one or two I had favourited were marked as no longer available and could not be used any more, so I unfavourited them which is not a problem.
Also, through the referenced post you linked regarding voices being removed/retired, I clicked on the link in that post to the list, and the name "Max" is not searchable - i.e. there is no results found on the page for "Max". I even read through the table.
So you will have to forgive me if for not being convinced this is an issue with a legacy voice at this point.
Kind regards,
Sam
Hi SamBarnard-98a4,
Thanks again for calling this out and for sharing the additional detail around what you were seeing with the "Max" AI voice.
You were right to question the earlier explanation. I took another look into this and was able to reproduce the same gradual volume decrease behavior in a brand-new Storyline 360 project using Update 116 with the "Max" AI voice and multilingual v2 model.
I also tested the same workflow in Update 112 and did not observe the issue there, which suggests this may be tied to a more recent change rather than expected behavior from a retired or unsupported voice.
I’ve now shared this with our team as a possible bug so they can investigate further. Your notes around longer clips and paragraph breaks were especially helpful in narrowing this down, so I appreciate the thorough testing and follow-up.
In the meantime, using a different AI voice may help avoid the volume decrease behavior while the team continues investigating.
