Hymns are now playing in "text to voice" instead of music

[brandon.langford]

Hi friends, this is my first time posting / visiting this forum. I've been using my Android phone (Samsung Galaxy S4) to play hymns as background music in my early morning seminary class for many months without issues (except for the few copyrighted songs that don't have music). Somehow my Gospel Library music is stuck in a mode of doing "text to voice" for mostly all the songs now. Not at all helpful. Anyone know how I can shut off the robot voice so it never tries to "play music" again, and get my app back to playing the nice hymn music again? Please help.

I've made sure that I have Wi-Fi enabled when trying to play the songs (since I had set to only download content with wi-fi to limit cell data bandwidth). I kind of suspect it started doing this on a day when our church building's wi-fi was spotty (cutting out). One or two of the songs I tried to play that the student chose started doing the robot voice for text-to-voice, and I've had problems ever since.

BTW, if there's an administrator on here, could we have a setting to tell Gospel Library to NEVER use the robot voice for music content? I can't think of any situation I'd ever want that.

Thank you!

[sbradshaw]

Under normal circumstances, there are four cases where text-to-speech will play instead of regular audio in Gospel Library for Android:

1. Audio doesn't exist for the page (Handbook 1, old issues of the Ensign, most content in other languages) or is not yet available (new magazines and manuals).
2. Audio exists but is not downloaded, and your device is not connected to the internet.
3. Audio exists but is not downloaded, you're connected to a cellular network instead of Wi-Fi, and you have "Limit Mobile Network Use" on in Settings.
4. Text-to-speech is set as the preferred audio voice in audio settings (three-dots menu on the audio player).

You mention that you are on Wi-Fi, which eliminates (2) and (3). I'm assuming you're listening to hymns from the English hymnbook, which eliminates (1). Have you checked your preferred audio voice in audio settings to make sure it didn't get switched accidentally?

Another thing you could try would be downloading the audio for the hymns, and playing the downloaded audio instead of streaming. Alternatively, you could try using the Church's LDS Music app.

EDIT: Audio for the English Children's Songbook seems to be missing in the app currently. Were you trying to listen in the Children's Songbook?

[brandon.langford]

4. Text-to-speech is set as the preferred audio voice in audio settings (three-dots menu on the audio player).

Hi sbradshaw, thank you for your reply. I am trying to play the normal hymns, not childrens songbook songs. When I go to the Hymn Book in Gospel Library, I click on the 3 dots, and get the following options:

New Screen...
Related Content
Share
Play Audio
Language ->
Settings

I have tried "play audio", which seems to do the same thing as tapping the yellow headphones icon -- starts the audio player in the app.
I have gone into settings, and see the "Limit Mobile Network Use" button is on. I don't see any button in my app settings for preferred audio setting.

Since sending this note earlier, I tried going in to my phones "Application Manager", found the Gospel Library app, and tried "clear cache" + "clear data", to see if there was some setting that was being stored that could be cleared. Since doing that, I had to log in again with my username and password, and it appeared to have cleared my downloaded content (books of scripture, general conference sessions, Hymns, etc.). So, I re-downloaded the Hymns (I'll re-download the other manuals and scriptures later). When I went to the song I tried playing a couple of times that keeps doing text to voice (Hymn #143 "Let the Holy Spirit Guide"), I tapped on the yellow headphones, and it picked up where I had left off this morning, a few seconds into the song, and still text to voice. If I then press the "skip left" or "skip right" buttons on the audio player, it goes to song 145 or 144 and wants to play those in the same text to voice format.

However, if I close the audio player (yellow "x" button), then go to song 145 or 144, then press the yellow headphone button, it starts playing the music and shows the normal timeline at the bottom of the music player: "00:00 ----- 03:28" instead of what I see for text-to-voice, which is something like: "0 ------ 17" where the normal timeline would be.

Are my students maybe just picking unluckily hymns that do not have music for them, but instead they default to text-to-voice? I've had several of them the last few days. Unfortunately, I can't remember what the other hymns were that they wanted to sing. This morning, we tried three hymns in a row; each one did text-to-voice (started with hymn #143). So, we finally sang without background music.

I've not tried this other app you mentioned (didn't know about it). I'll try searching in the Google Play store for that.

[brandon.langford]

Sorry... I just noticed that there are 3 dots in the audio player. So, I clicked on that when it was up, and I had a single option:
"Audio Settings"
--> Playback Speed (1x chosen)
--> Continuous Play (radio button selected)
--> Main Voice (Male selected)
--> Text-to-speech settings (allows me to choose between Samsung's test-to-speech engine or Google's.)
--> Also has "speech rate", "listen to an example", and "Default language status -- (English selected)"

[russellhltn]

Are my students maybe just picking unluckily hymns that do not have music for them, but instead they default to text-to-voice?

The teenagers I knew growing up would spend time looking for hymns without music just to "get" the teacher.

However, they must be good at keeping a straight face as I'd think you catch on by now if that was what was happening.

[sbradshaw]

I was able to reproduce the problem on Hymn 143 – that particular hymn doesn't seem to have audio. 15, 62, 82, 124, and 284 also seem to be missing audio. The audio does exist on LDS.org and in the LDS Music app for those hymns – those songs are not copyright-restricted. I'd recommend sending feedback using the Send Feedback option under Settings, so the content team can look into it.

[brandon.langford]

Are my students maybe just picking unluckily hymns that do not have music for them, but instead they default to text-to-voice?

The teenagers I knew growing up would spend time looking for hymns without music just to "get" the teacher.

However, they must be good at keeping a straight face as I'd think you catch on by now if that was what was happening.

Ha ha. Maybe that *is* what's happening. Although they don't like singing the songs without backup music. So, if that's the case, it's kind of back-firing on them.

[brandon.langford]

I was able to reproduce the problem on Hymn 143 – that particular hymn doesn't seem to have audio. 15, 62, 82, 124, and 284 also seem to be missing audio. The audio does exist on LDS.org and in the LDS Music app for those hymns – those songs are not copyright-restricted. I'd recommend sending feedback using the Send Feedback option under Settings, so the content team can look into it.

Thank you Samuel. I also downloaded the LDS Music app, and will try using that. Hopefully today was the last day of hearing the robo-voice "sing" the hymns!