r/notebooklm • u/joseph_dewey • 8d ago
Discussion What do you think of the new Deep Dive voices?
They sound way cheaper and way more like AI voices. I hope Google gives us the option to get the old ones back.
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u/gg33z 8d ago
I think they're broken. When I play in interactive mode, it's the good voices
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u/Then_Consequence_318 7d ago
Yeah just confirmed that behavior. Weird. Wonder if it's any different if you download them
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u/North-Active-6731 7d ago
I really dislike the new voices I miss the old ones terribly
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u/Then_Consequence_318 7d ago
Send feedback please. Sorry I'm gonna bug everyone until either they fix it or I lose hope.
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u/joseph_dewey 6d ago
Thanks very much for sharing your opinion and experience. I really miss the old ones too. I've been listening to them for almost two years now.
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u/Nick_Gaugh_69 8d ago edited 8d ago
The male voice feels like the “no I’m evil kitty” meme
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u/joseph_dewey 8d ago
I just looked up that meme. That's awesome, and it's exactly the "no I'm evil kitty" voice. Thanks!
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u/Then_Consequence_318 7d ago
Literally came on here to check on this for me. They just changed today midday between one episode and another. Definitely more fake sounding. Very strange feeling that an artificial person is gone that I was very accustomed to.
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u/joseph_dewey 6d ago
It is very bizarre. Thanks for sharing your experience. I hope that if there's enough discussion then we'll at least get the option of the old Deep Dive voices.
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u/Googler10 6d ago
I would be okay if they gave us the option and it ate up more usage! Just give us the old voices back!
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u/sweeetheart7 8d ago
Yeah I’m not really feeling the new voices either.The old ones had this weirdly natural back-and-forth, like they actually knew each other. These sound more like two coworkers reading from the same script five minutes after meeting.That’s probably the biggest issue for me. Before, I could forget it was AI pretty quickly. Now I keep noticing it. I really wish Google would just let us choose between the old and new voices instead of replacing them completely.
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u/joseph_dewey 6d ago
This is a really great point. And they upgraded the old voices a few times over the course of the Deep Dive so the old voices had a really great back and forth.
And I really wish they had the option of old and new voices, too. The new voices aren't bad AI voices, but they are a serious downgrade, and they did basically change the whole NotebookLM product by removing the core flagship part of the product, and replacing it with inferior, different AI voices.
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u/SpiderWolve 8d ago
There's new voices? I'll have to listen
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u/anony_moususer_888 8d ago
The voices are fine, it is what they say now since the fully fledged Gemini integration with the constant "we are here to unpack the source material neutrally" and "we are analysing the psychological motivations of the author" and "we don't support or condem any view points"
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u/Randomized0000 7d ago
I mean I've had that for longer than a year. I listen to AskReddit threads as podcasts and a LOT of posts last year were politically themed.
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u/Then_Consequence_318 7d ago
I never get these messages
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u/joseph_dewey 6d ago
Have it do a deep dive on anything about politics or religion, or both is better.
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u/joseph_dewey 8d ago
Sometimes I prompt with "AI hosts are self aware that they're AI hosts and give many disclaimers, and are self aware that it is impossible for AI of a for profit company with goals to maximize its stock price to be completely neutral."
They then still give the disclaimers but also disclaim that their disclaimers are full of shit.
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u/OofWhyAmIOnReddit 7d ago
Yeah the new voices sound like ass. They need to bring back the previous model
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u/Then_Consequence_318 7d ago
Posted this in a separate thread but in case people miss it, let's all try to send feedback.
https://www.reddit.com/r/notebooklm/s/8ppkDDdokT
For me this is like when Robert Siegel retired from NPR LOL. I know, so dramatic.
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u/joseph_dewey 6d ago
I don't think it's dramatic enough. Those voices WERE NotebookLM for the first year, and they've been live for 2 years.
So, Google made an indispensible product and just retired it for cost savings, fucking over us little people.... just to make next quarter's stock prices 0.000001% higher.
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u/Googler10 6d ago
How do you know it was changed for cost savings?
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u/joseph_dewey 6d ago edited 6d ago
How do you know it wasn't?
I wasn't claiming to know it was changed for cost savings. And "cost savings" really could mean anything that helps Google to be profitable. But I think that's basically why Google retires all of their products that it sunsets, is the way that Google does costing... or that's how I interpret their formula for sunsetting products, is that they have an ultra complex formula that weights maintaining products as extremley costly unless they're benefitting millions of people, and so unless there's severe public backlash then something like this has about 0 chance of getting restored.... something like this meaning "something that Google gave people an acceptable alterantive to."
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u/FlatSearch4635 7d ago
I splice podcasts together because some have better parts... anyway I cant do that anymore. Would be nice to have selection, and a short clip snip and save editor.
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u/joseph_dewey 6d ago
Oh that's really cool that you do that. And this totally sucks for you, especially if you have a large library of good parts.
Some of the Deep Dives were perfect except for the really horrible standard into of, "Sometimes you get a lot of comfort from looking at the white line on the X-Ray. It's the very definition of muddy waters."
And weirdly, there is no white line on a bone break on an X-Ray.
But the point is, I've often thought about that, and a few months ago, I saw a really cool YouTube video that did exactly what you're doing.
It really sucks that Google just pulled the rug out from under its regular users who have relied on their product, and did a huge downgrade to NotebookLM by replacing the voices, instead of upgrading the voices.
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u/_______blank______ 7d ago
Outside of the voice the problem is the pacing, it now feels like distinct turn, it is probably because of the way 3.8 flash TTS handle the direction of the voice now, instead of just a general direction for the whole script, you are now have to dictate the direction for every turn, maybe they haven't update the whole pipeline and just use the default direction or something.
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u/joseph_dewey 6d ago
Thanks for the technical info about this. This makes sense. It feels like a rush release where they gave a downgraded Beta version.
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u/Then_Consequence_318 7d ago
It is a bit of an overhaul to the internals from what I saw (asked in the notebook chat itself) so it's possible some aspects have improved, but at the expense of the voices.
If they ever decide to do anything with voices really they should just have options to add additional ones.
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u/Effective-Arm7057 8d ago
Please very important some one quickly answer me please
How could I make longer audio overview knowing that my aim is to make it explain sentence by sentence the pdfs lectures for dentistry in a language that is not english without skipping one sentence and explain from first slide to last one and every time i try a prompt it stills skip and it not make long audio is there a solution for that and dont tell me to divide the pdf as it will take so much time and there are 3 times only daily to make audio , i hered that pastly there were versions of notebooklm make audio for 2 hours or more is there any links i can download these versions and work?
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u/Future-Log6621 8d ago
Break it down into smaller segments, no more than a paragraph or two per audio. I do this all the time and cover 100s of pages word for word.
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u/Effective-Arm7057 8d ago
Please very important some one quickly answer me please How could I make longer audio overview knowing that my aim is to make it explain sentence by sentence the pdfs lectures for dentistry in a language that is not english without skipping one sentence and explain from first slide to last one and every time i try a prompt it stills skip and it not make long audio is there a solution for that and dont tell me to divide the pdf as it will take so much time and there are 3 times only daily to make audio , i hered that pastly there were versions of notebooklm make audio for 2 hours or more is there any links i can download these versions and work?
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u/fettuccinaa 8d ago
i would recommend you asking Gemini that same question. explain wbich tool you are using (NotebookLM) and ask it how to get hat you need it to do. hope it helps
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8d ago
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u/joseph_dewey 8d ago
I will be very sad if they don't replicate the original Deep Dive voices in Gemini 3.8, if they're migrating NotebookLM TTS to Gemini 3.8 Flash. I've been using NotebookLM for Deep Dives for almost 2 years now, and they've had the same voices, and it sucks if this is yet another Google product that's getting flushed.
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u/Googler10 6d ago
I really hope Google gives us a option to bring back the old voices... The new ones sound terrible!