That doesn't make any sense. Where did it go? I was just using it this morning! Clearly the voice has to still be stored somewhere on my phone.

iOS handles voices in a strange way I think. It has a compact fallback that it uses in case the voice is unavailable, then it switches to an enhanced variant when it downloads the voice. What were you using the compact voice with?

Turtlepower, are you talking about the new South African English Siri voices as being the new ones you wanted to try out? If so, they do have weird issues. I like them though, so once those get fixed I may use them.

I am actually the opposite as you, I really do hate all compact voices. They sound raspy/rubbery and metallic to me, and some of them dont' have much clarity. If I have to use a compact voice, Samantha will do. But I always use the enhanced US Siri male voice.

In IOS 10, a lot of things changed with Siri voices to increase their naturalness. The intonation on the IOS 10 version was a little robotic for me, but I still wanted to try it in Voiceover. Strangely you couldn't use those versions with Voiceover though. When you downloaded the enhanced voices, it would fallback to the IOS 9 versions which, while being a little more lively sounding to me, they were of lower quality and had annoying artifacts I didn't like. I used it because it was my favorite at the time. I can't remember if compact Siri voices were available in IOS 10, but if I had to guess, I'd bet the old ones were still available.

But at some point the compact Siri voices seemed to have been removed. This was definitely the case in IOS 11, since when I started trying betas, the compact Siri voices weren't there. I'm pretty sure their removal coincides with Apple taking charge of development and using a different engine; Nuance previously just used the Vocalizer engine for the Siri voices which is why they could so easily work with the NvDA Vocalizer driver. Why they'd wait for IOS 11 to fully switch to the new engine is beyond me, but maybe it wasn't stable enough for Voiceover or something. That could well be, since when they first became available to Voiceover they indeed had really bad bugs. In any case, since siri voices use a different engine now, I doubt compact voices will exist anymore. Given Siri's purpose, I can understand why, though the way they quietly handled it is a little odd and unfortunately it directly affects people like you which isn't right. I'm not sure if new versions of IOS fall back on a compact voice if the enhanced ones aren't available, or if they just use Samantha or something now. But, if you were still using the old compact voices, or the old enhanced voices from IOS 9, those old versions will still work even on IOS 11 until you switch voices. At least that was the case for me, and it would make a lot of sense as to why you are only noticing this now. If you used the compact version for two years without a switch, nothing was forcing you not to use it. Once you switch though, the old versions that you were using are no longer available. Whether they are still on the phone is anyone's guess. They may be there, but then again they may not, you never know with Apple.

What pronunciation and robotic issues do you have with the enhanced US male? You said that it sounds fine in Siri but in Voiceover it is not to your liking? Can you detail this a little more? Can you specify the differences you hear, or provide a recording of how it sounds in Voiceover? There shouldn't be any differences, though I haven't done any real hard testing to confirm this. ON mine though, they are very similar and that is why I use them.

Oh? I didn't know Vocalizer tags were accepted in Voiceover, or that Siri voices supported them. I don't use them. As an aside, I do think it would be interesting to see all the other Vocalizer voices get that kind of upgrade. Granted they'd be quite a bit larger, and compact voices would still have to be a thing in those cases since those voices are still used a lot in imbedded systems I think where enhanced versions would be too much, but I think we're at a place now where the benefits of higher than 22K voices outweigh the costs for the most part, and besides with the new machine learning they're doing, the unit selection seems to be a little smarter. Speaking of which, I read this interesting article explaining the technicalities of Siri voice evolution with a few audio samples to illustrate the changes. Nothing mentioned about compact voices, but the article is pretty interesting as a fan of the enhanced voices.

While looking for random stuff like that, I did find hints that IOS 12 will bring a new Siri voice. Any info on that?

At Musicalman, yes, I was referring to the South African voices. The male voice in particular has a very pleasant accent, and, as I am rather partial to that accent in general, it motivated me to see how they stacked up. As you said, they could definitely be improved on, which I hope is the case. I probably wouldn't be complaining otherwise.

I'll see what I can do about a sample. One of the things I notice though, is that the US Siri male tends to stress punctuation in the wrong places. For example, if you're in settings, and you want to go into Voiceover's options, it will say Voiceover, on? Note the punctuation, as to me, there is not only an inappropriate pause between Voiceover and on, but why is it a question? The compact voice did not do this. It seems nitpicky, I know, but it just irks me.

He also sounds clearer when actually used with Siri, although this might be something an actual sample would be better at clarifying. I usually use the British Siri male voice with Siri, so I haven't actually done extensive testing, but from what I played with yesterday, it did seem to be the case that the enhanced voice, when used with Voiceover, had a muddier quality that I didn't like, and again, the inflection seemed off in certain places, although nothing I can exactly put my finger on at the moment. If it would help, I would be more than happy to upload a sample.

around IOS11 beta 4 or so, all IOS 10 siri voices were removed, along with the default. at least, as others have said, they may still be on your phone, but you won't be able to use them. there is an enhanced and a compact of everyone except all the siri voices, and alex. if you look at Nicki, for instance, even her compact version was removed. since, I'll assume you didn't touch your voice settings throughout IOS10, you weren't affected. unless you have an iCloud backup before the change, though, I don't see any ways for you to get back. was personally never a fan of compact voices here either. if I must, I'll take Samantha, but well. another thing. US and UK siri male voices can't handle fast rates at all, and while they kind of work, as others have also pointed out, they pause for no reason, insert question marks where they shouldn't, and quite a number of things. been using susan for quite a while over here, partly because no one uses her, got bored of Samantha, and Kate doesn't exactly have a nice tone. South african siri is pretty nice, (not a fan of male voices in general) and she does seem to be more responsive than the US siri female at this point.

Turtlepower17, yeah, question intonation when there doesn't need to be any is actually somewhat common with Siri voices. Apple seems to be trying to get rid of the question words as they pop up, recently the words "Braille" and "words" when spoken on there own are not rising anymore. South African Siri used to have an issue with z as well, saying "zed? Zulu?" when it was encountered, but it's partially fixed in betas now. Also the phrase "English U.S." was fixed, though there was an interesting bug at one point where Daniel would say "English U, slnc 200, k", most likely because the speech manager was sending the wrong commands to the wrong synthesizer.

Haha Munawar, indeed. Lyrebird and Google will probably be the firfst to do it, though something is giving me the impression that Google will be the first to offer that functionality in a commercial product like a general purpose TTS voice. Lyrebird doesn't seem to be geared at general purpose usage.
At Turtlepower, I just tested the US male and in your Voiceover On example, it didn't sound like a question but rather an indefinite period, like he knew he was supposed to end the phrase but wasn't sure if it was a full sentence or just part of one, a semicolon perhaps . But yeah, Siri voices do have weird intonation at times. I take it as part of the territory with these enhanced voices, but I can understand how it would be annoying if you're not used to it, and especially if you actually prefer compact.

Well, I'll see what, if anything, Apple has to say about the matter, but I'm beginning to see that I'm fighting a losing battle here, unfortunately. For now, Tom is the least hideous of the bunch, so I'm trying to take it in stride.

Yeah, the tags are a bit like SAPI 4, \attribute=value\, but they're more complicated to write because you have to send an escape character, character 27, 0x1b, . Pitch, rate and volume are written as something like \pitch=10\, or \volume=10\. Vocalizer also allows you to change the voice being used on the fly with \voice=name\, but I've never gotten that command to work on iOS, possibly because Apple's implementation may identify the voices differently.