The UNCANNY VALLEY IS REAL!
The synthetic speech of Chinese voice feedback sounds really disturbing, creepy, robotic, cold, stiff. To be honest it definitely frightens people that first hear it. And people are ACTUALLY getting goosebumps tbh, I did the survey. The eeriness of this synthetic voice has seriously fallen into the auditory “UNCANNY VALLEY”.
Many of my ride pals have the same complaints so I have to file this complaint. People do feel the revulsion of this voice.
I’d suggest an upgrade of voice feedback speech tone to a more natural, expressive, pleasant & welcoming one. Honestly, The current one sounds very cheap, low-end, which simply DOESN’T sound like a high-end bluetooth headset that worth $339.
(Whereas an entry-level $60 LEXIN ET-COM model has a way better Mandarin voice feedback)
I do not know the mechanism of the voiceover in this device. Is theres a built-in TTS engine? or they are just pre-recorded audio clips. If these are just audio clips, I’m willing to offer help: I can providing better Chinese voice feedback audio files, free of charge, no thoughts of returns, as long as you guys give me the Chinese text transcript. And I can also show you where to get them, for free, if there’s further voice contents added.
Why I do this? First and foremost, I just want to hear a nicer, improved voice feedback, for myself. Apart from my little selfish thought, we do have a fast-growing community of riders in China, a warm, united, inclusive community, so I’d also like help my pals to report suggestions. And For the manufacture yourself, the rider community growth is REALLY exponential in recent years! I honestly do recommand SENA products to my friends, however we also see rivals joining the game in BT intercom/headphones, competitive in both features and price, reshaping market shares. Yet I would like to see your brand keep up the success in China, so THIS, is indeed a brand image booster.
And Last, don't forget to keep improving the Mandarin recognition accuracy.
Thank you for listening to our advice