I've been using Articulate 360's voice to speech feature in software simulations, instead of the text bubbles. I've noticed that frequently the first word or syllable gets cut off. For example If a sentence starts with "To edit a document..." The "To" gets cut off. I tried inserting some spaces with the keyboard space bar or dots to no avail. Any tricks to fix this? Also, are there tricks to improve the intonation? I've noticed that adding commas between words can make a difference sometimes.

Can we get someone from Articulate to chime in on this problem that seems unresolved 7 years later? Adding a second silence at the start helps, but not all TTS can afford to have a second delay before being played. This is a huge hassle and gives a terrible user expierence for our learners.

Ashley, Thanks a lot for your useful tips. First of all I just want to say the the text to speech is an awesome feature which I am using extensively. However, this is an important thing that detracts it. Sometimes, when I play a video with text to speech, the first syllable (or full word if it is very short such as "if" or "to") is not heard. Perhaps it's because the video can be a bit sluggish when it starts playing. Regardless, it is good practice to have slight (say 1 sec.) silence at the start of each clip so that the learner has a moment to "tune their brain" into the clip before it starts talking. At In some instances, it is also useful to insert moments of silence between words to emphasize a point or switch to a new concept that you introduce. My question is... Is there a trick to insert a silence before or between words? I tried inserting different characters such as commas or periods but that it didn't help. Imagine how simple it would be. Each comma adds a second of silence For example: Example 1,,,,Welcome to this course. Example 2Take a moment to look at this diagram,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, Have you noticed the bla, bla, bla? A workaround is to Edit Audio and insert a silence. However, that's time consuming and lost once you edit the Text-to-Speech or regenerate it.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts Tom. I've submitted a feature request on your behalf.

Why it happens and how to solve it. Dear Amos, I found the same issue, and this is caused by the way all VOX "voice-operated exchanged" radio transmitters such as Bluetooth headphones and other radio devices work. Your text-to-speech application is not the issue.Why you miss the first word or two of each new sentence:To maximize battery life Bluetooth headsets and earbud devices only transmit signals between their paired devices when there is sound, which is not an issue when you're listening to music as it transmits during the whole song. When you have a text-to-speech app the pauses between sentences, marked by a period are long enough to stop the transmission briefly. The issue occurs when the reader app then starts the new sentence which reveals the inherent delay nature of V.O.X transmit triggers. The Hack - A simple workaround:Knowing this I have background white noise such as "meditation" tracks from my Itunes account playing on the device I"m using to listen to my reading on. Don't worry, If you don't want to hear it, just turn down the volume in your Itunes/music app to zero or one above that. This prevents an interruption of the Bluetooth signal to your headphones/earbuds solving your problem. An added benefit of this solution is that it can help further isolate your reading from your surrounding. This is clearly an issue that can be addressed in future Bluetooth versions, as this doesn't happen during phone calls. Until it is addressed permanently, this is your best solution. Best,Joshua S

This started 5 years ago and im using this service and it is still having the same issues, this is highly unacceptable, how can a company not fix something like this in 5 WHOLE YEARS

Text to speech - How to fix the first word being cut off

64 Replies

RachelDillon-7e
Community Member
3 months ago
I'm having the same issue with the first word being cut off from the audio file I've imported into each slide. What's strange is if I click back to refresh the slide or on go back to a slide I've already viewed then that first word is spoken. I am not using the speech to text function in Storyline in this project.
- Jürgen_Schoene_
  Community Member
  3 months ago
  there are two well known scenarios where this (missing first word) can happen
  
  (1) when the learner is using bluetooth headphones and the headphones go into power saving mode. then it takes some time until the headphones are ready
  
  (2) most browsers (???) need approx. 0.1 ... 0.2 seconds to play the first audio of a page correctly, the first syllable or word may then be missing - this problem has always existed - not only in storyline
  
  the general fix is to add approx. 0.3 seconds of “silence” before each audio. for the fix of the bluetooth headphone problem, the silence should not be absolute, but contain a minimal amount of noise
  
  of course this has to be done before importing, because it changes the timing slightly
CarmenHufcut
Community Member
3 months ago
I am still experiencing an ongoing issue that has not yet been resolved. Despite assurances that it is being investigated, I have not received any meaningful updates or solutions. I would appreciate any assistance in addressing this matter.
CPollitt
Community Member
3 months ago
I have also experienced the first word being cut off when creating Text-to-Audio in Storyline 360, but what I've discovered is this issue seems to be directly related to what speaker I'm selecting my audio be played back out of. When I listen through a headset, I experience the issue. But when I play it directly from my laptop speaker, the issue goes away.

I'd still like Articulate Support to look into this, as most of our learners will be taking their course modules at their cubicles with headsets/ear buds and we want to mitigate this problem for them.
- KellyAuner
  Staff
  3 months ago
  Hi CPollitt,
  
  Thanks for reaching out and sharing your findings!
  
  You mentioned that the speaker you're using impacts whether this issue is present or not. Have you tried using different headsets? Is this consistent across multiple courses? If you're willing to share one of your affected files, I'd like to test this out on my end as well. We'll delete any files from our systems once troubleshooting is complete.
Jürgen_Schoene_
Community Member
2 years ago
wireless headphones?
Jürgen_Schoene_
Community Member
2 years ago
is this cut off audio the first audio in the slide?
ThereseMicha925
Community Member
2 years ago
Thank you Jurgen. Here are my answers: Sorry, it is the first "word" not sentence. It is cut off after I publish it. It runs well on the Preview this Slide. I publish the course to Review 360. I use Articulate built-in voices in TTS.
- MargaretLang832
  Community Member
  2 years ago
  I had this same issue a few years ago, that's why I'm on this feed, and the only solution I found was to edit the beginning of the first audio recording and add 4 seconds of silence. It helps if you know this in advance. Hope this helps.
  
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Jürgen_Schoene_
Community Member
2 years ago

The first sentence is cut off

sentence or word ?

is the audio cut off when

you play it directly in storyline after creating ?

test the slide with "Preview this slide" ?

published to course with "publish to web" ?

do you use SSML for text-to-speech ?
ThereseMicha925
Community Member
2 years ago
I'm having the same issue of Amos even after few years of his posting. The first sentence is cut off. I thought to use the commas before the sentence starts, but they appear in the Closed Captioning.
RobertWoods-110
Community Member
2 years ago
This fixed it for me...

Right click on the sound icon and go to 'Sound'

Go to the playback tab.

Choose the speakers that you are using and choose properties.

Click Advanced and UNCHECK 'Enable audio enhancements'
- StevenBenassi
  Staff
  2 years ago
  Hi Robert!
  
  Thanks for sharing your workaround! I'm sure other members of the community will find the steps very helpful!
  
  Have a great rest of your week!
JoshNellist-71b
Community Member
3 years ago
This is a pretty old thread now, but I'm experiencing it in fall 2023. I believe the issue to be this:

Many bluetooth headsets/speakers will go into a type of power saving mode when there is no sound being transmitted, such as when a Storyline slide ends. Sometimes this happens as quickly as 1/2 a second of silence, depending on the device.

When the next slide begins, the headset won't be triggered to "on" until it senses sound. With a human narrated audio file there is likely to be a tiny bit of "room tone" or other sound that will precede the voice kicking in, even by a fraction of a second. Most editors will always have a slight bit of dead air at the start of a narration file. This will trigger the headset to turn on and by the time the voice starts the first word, we'll hear it. But, with a generated voice the audio is perfectly clean, and thus the voice is the first sound the headset picks up. This leads to the first word being frequently clipped.

I'm testing this out at my company now. Most users are listening to e-trainings on Poly headsets and this problem is happening a lot. I'm experimenting with background sounds, like music, to keep the headset on. I don't really want music playing on everything so the next step is to experiment with some kind of sound that will trigger the headset but humans won't actually hear. Maybe that tone that only teenagers can hear or something?
- Jürgen_Schoene_
  Community Member
  3 years ago
  How about a very quiet background noise - I've already done that successfully
  
  you could start all slides with 1 sec of such (almost inaudible) audiofile
  - StacyMadsen
    Community Member
    3 years ago
    You can also add a fraction of a second space at the beginning in the audio edit screen.