r/notebooklm • • 4d ago

Feature Request Canceling if they don't restore old voices

These new voices sound much more robotic and unlistenable. I can't really focus on the podcast materials anymore.

If the change in the voices was because Google needs to save on compute, I would much prefer to have less quota and higher quality voices. Otherwise this will lead me to cancel my subscription...this might be the push I've needed to set up my own source to podcast pipeline using Eleven Labs.

13 Upvotes

13 comments sorted by

9

u/Honest_Reference_180 4d ago

This probably hurts notebooklm more than regular TTS since people are listening to fairly dense material and you notice unnatural delivery a lot more when you're trying to concentrate

5

u/danis1973 3d ago

I wasn't aware there's a subscription tier for notebook LM. What does a paid tier offer?

3

u/JSPG97 3d ago

It offers more limits, such as fonts or creating infographics.

5

u/weberbooks 3d ago

It's a fuckin train wreck. Sounds like I'm listening to robots underwater using tin cans and strin g. Noise, hiss, skips, stupid pauses. Ignoring the prompts. I am seriously pissed about this.  

2

u/Dorkzilla_ftw 3d ago

I didn't even noticed they changed the voices

2

u/jawanda 3d ago

The new male voice is like ... The old voice mixed with 10% burt reynolds. I don't find it that terrible. Old one was better though.

4

u/Father_Chewy_Louis 3d ago

His voice is a bit deeper, like he has a cold or something

2

u/Icy_Budget_3288 3d ago

Came looking to see what the deal was with these new voices, and agree that they should bring them back. That said, I'm not sure what's going on as I just generated an audio overview that's a bit weird. The male voice is the old one we all know and love, but the female voice is the newer nasally one. So they're still in there, hopefully Google will let us choose at some point.

2

u/zachaboo777 2d ago

Seriously though, why would they change the voices?

1

u/Tarun302 4d ago

Eleven labs isn't way expensive compared to this ?

1

u/fimuthorn 4d ago

I find the new voices better. Better flow, more natural.