Sometimes the AI won&#8217;t say things the way you like. Like pronouncing your client&#8217;s brand name wrong 🫠. 



Our AI is constantly improving and getting better at pronouncing words correctly, but you got a project due tomorrow &#8211; what should you do?



Well, you have two choices:



1. Spell the word out as it sounds directly in the text box (this is typically the quickest and fastest way.)



2. Use our Pronunciation Editor



The Pronunciation Editor is designed for you to teach the AI how to pronounce a certain word for your project.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Pronunciation hacks </h3>



Before we jump into using the Pronunciation Editor, let&#8217;s go through the first option that can help you get the right sound on the first try!



● Type out the word as it should sound. For example, &#8220;LOVO&#8221; sounds better if you spell it out as &#8220;Lovoe.&#8221;



● Use lowercase for all capital words. The AI tends to read all capitals as individual letters, so if we typed &#8220;LOVO,&#8221; the output would be &#8221; L-O-V-O.&#8221; 



If you are also using our instant subtitles as part of our project you can directly edit the subtitles to show the correct spelling and stylization.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Using the Pronunciation Editor</h3>



We have found that the Pronunciation Editor works best with our Rapid and Global voices. The Pro voices respond best using the hacks above.



Step 1 First, open the Pronunciation Editor panel on the left.



Step 2 Check that the correct language is selected &#8211; this is important because the word you correct will only correspond to the language selected. This also includes different English accents, so for example, if you saved a word in English &#8211; GB, the edited pronunciation will not be updated in English &#8211; US. 



Step 3 Enter the source word. In our case, that&#8217;s &#8220;LOVO&#8221;.



Step 4 Next, enter the target word. That&#8217;s &#8220;Lovoe&#8221; for us.



Step 5 Press + button, and it&#8217;s done! 🎉



<figure class="wp-block-video"><video autoplay loop muted src="https://lovoai.wpcomstaging.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/7.1.mp4" playsinline></video></figure>



When you return to your project, you will notice that any text blocks with the edited word will need to be regenerated, indicated by the red dot next to it. 



From now on, any time you type &#8220;LOVO&#8221; it will be generated to &#8220;Lovoe,&#8221; when using the same language and accent.

Using the pronunciation editor

When you are using our Rapid voices, you can add emphasis to individual words to add more energy and deliverability to your voiceover. After all, a sentence can mean very different things depending on what word is emphasized.



Click on your text box and select &#8220;Emphasis&#8221; located just above. Next, click on the words that you want to emphasize. Then click &#8220;Done&#8221; and that&#8217;s it!



<figure class="wp-block-video" style="padding-right:10%;padding-left:10%"><video autoplay loop muted src="https://lovoai.wpcomstaging.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/1.mp4"></video></figure>



Please note: If you are using a Custom (cloned) voice, Global voice, or Pro voice, you will notice that this option will be grayed out as this function is still in development for these voices.

Adding emphasis to words

Adjusting speed and pauses is easy in Genny. Follow the step-by-step guides below!



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Changing speed</h3>



You can change the speed of any voice and each individual text block by clicking on the Speed icon at the top of the text block.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1684" height="314" data-attachment-id="4355" data-permalink="/post/adjusting-speed-and-pauses/image-1-2/" data-orig-file="https://i0.wp.com/lovoai.wpcomstaging.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/image-1.png?fit=1684%2C314&amp;ssl=1" data-orig-size="1684,314" data-comments-opened="0" data-image-meta="{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}" data-image-title="image-1" data-image-description="" data-image-caption="" data-medium-file="https://i0.wp.com/lovoai.wpcomstaging.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/image-1.png?fit=1200%2C224&amp;ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i0.wp.com/lovoai.wpcomstaging.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/image-1.png?fit=1684%2C314&amp;ssl=1" src="https://i0.wp.com/lovoai.wpcomstaging.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/image-1.png?resize=1684%2C314&#038;ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-4355" data-recalc-dims="1"/></figure>



You can also change the speed for multiple text blocks in one go in the workspace. 



To do this, click on the speed icon on the leftmost panel of the screen to select all, or select individual text blocks you would like to change the speed of by checking the tick box located left of each block.



<figure class="wp-block-video"><video autoplay loop muted src="https://lovoai.wpcomstaging.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/1-2.mp4" playsinline></video></figure>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Adding pauses</h3>



If you are using a Rapid voice, you can add pauses in between words or sentences.



Click the pause icon on the left hand panel (looks like a stopwatch).



Then, to put a pause after a word, click a word and select the pause duration.



To put a pause after a sentence, click the last word of the sentence and select the pause duration.



After you are done adding pauses, click &#8220;Done&#8221; on the top banner.



<figure class="wp-block-video"><video autoplay loop muted src="https://lovoai.wpcomstaging.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/2.mp4" playsinline></video></figure>

Adjusting speed and pauses

Numbers can be tricky with text to speech systems. Say you wrote 1979. Did you mean the year nineteen seventy-nine, or did you mean the number one thousand nine hundred seventy-nine?



The <a href="/post/the-dos-and-donts-of-text-to-speech-for-businesses/">text to speech</a> system has no way of knowing exactly which way you would like it to pronounce the number. It will guess to the best of its abilities from the context, but it can get it wrong from time to time.



Therefore, for numbers, if you are facing an issue, the best practice is to space out the numbers as you want it to sound.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Phone numbers</h3>



958-2910-2992 => 9 5 8, 2 9 1 0, 2 9 9 2 (adding commas will create natural pauses as if someone is reading the number out)



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Date</h3>



10/29/1992 => October 29, 19 92



1990s => 19 nineties



80s => eighties



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Time</h3>



9:10 AM => 9 10 AM 



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Decimals</h3>



69.39 => 69 point 3 9

Getting numbers correct

In most cases, Genny will pronounce acronyms letter by letter.



For example, YMCA will be pronounced Y Em See Ae



If you want the acronym to be read as is, like SWAT or POTUS, you need to spell it out in lower case letters like swat and potus.

Acronyms

Sometimes the AI might speak in a weird way at the end of the sentence or pronounce some words oddly.



Whenever an unexpected result occurs, the first thing we always say is to regenerate &#8211; if you do not edit the sentence and just regenerate, it will not affect your generation credit. 



However, here are some of the most common problems we hear about and some potential solutions.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Problem 1: Sentence ends with an upward inflection</h2>



Try regenerating the block. Sometimes it takes a couple takes to get the good inflection at the end.



Also, try changing the punctuation. Try changing it to an exclamation mark from a period, for example.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Problem2: The last &#8216;s&#8217; is not pronounced.</h2>



Sometimes, words that end in &#8216;ies&#8217;, such as &#8216;twenties&#8217;, have trouble pronouncing the last &#8216;s&#8217;. Try respelling the &#8216;ies&#8217; to &#8216;ees&#8217;, like &#8216;twentees&#8217;, and the AI will do a much better job.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Problem 3: Some words are pronounced weirdly.</h2>



First solution to try is to regenerate the text block.



If it still does not work, use the pronunciation editor. Here is a <a href="https://lovo.ai/tutorials/creating-a-more-natural-voiceover/using-the-pronunciation-editor" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">guide</a> on how to use it.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Problem 4: Sometimes, the inflections are weird.</h2>



Again, first solution is to try regenerating the block.



Next, try and use the <a href="https://lovo.ai/tutorials/creating-a-more-natural-voiceover/adding-emphasis-to-words" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">emphasis</a> function. This adds emphasis to words and makes the sentence flow more naturally.



You can also try adding commas or changing the punctuation to see if it sounds better.



Need more help? Why not try out our <a href="https://discord.gg/QCN6eRG2bf">Discord server</a>, where we have dedicated channels for troubleshooting where you can speak to the team and fellow users for advice.

What to do when your voiceover sounds weird.

Pro voices are magical. They produce near-human-level quality voices with natural inflections and filled with emotions that fit the context. However, there are some pointers that you need to know in order to bring out the best performance from Pro voices. While Pro voices provide much higher performance than regular premium voices, they are still being developed and worked on, which can produce unusual results from time to time.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">1. Pro voices work best in longer sentences.</h3>



Compared to shorter sentences, Pro <a href="/post/what-is-voice-dubbing-and-how-does-it-work/">voices work</a> better with longer sentences. It also works better when there are multiple sentences in the same text block.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">2. How to work around the awful &#8220;repetition&#8221; bug</h3>



The Pro voices sometimes have a glitch that makes it repeat phrases that are not in the script. Here is what to do: Simply regenerate a few times. When you regenerate, the AI speaks in a slightly different style, and the repeated phrase should be gone. Regenerating with the same text will not cost you extra credits.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">3. How to work around the &#8220;premature ending&#8221; bug</h3>



Sometimes you will notice that the <a href="/post/the-ultimate-guide-to-ai-audio-generators/">audio generated</a> cuts off prematurely, so that either the last consonant isn&#8217;t pronounced, or the resonance of the last word isn&#8217;t naturally long enough. Here is what to do: Try adding a hyphen before the punctuation mark at the end. This tricks the AI into reading out the last word with more resonance at the end. Another method is to simply regenerate a few times. Regenerating with the same text will not cost you extra credits.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">4. Regeneration is your friend</h3>



As we mentioned previously, the Pro voices produce slightly different results every time you regenerate. If you aren&#8217;t happy with what was produced, regenerate to hear a different result. You will get different variations of the same script WITHOUT using additional generation credits.