Custom Garmin Voices

Custom Garmin Voices

Navigation device maker Garmin has created an infrastructure not only to sell custom voices for users to use on their navigation systems, but for users to create their own.

These four custom Garmin Voices were created using the free Garmin Voice Studio. They are provided here free for your enjoyment, but may not be re-used for commercial purposes without consent.

Dodger - inspired by the Cockney pickpocket character from Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist
King Richard - inspired by the stock car racer from the legendary Petty family of Level Cross, North Carolina
Siegfried - inspired by actor's Bernie Kopell's indelible chief of KAOS from the Get Smart TV series.
Terminator - inspired by the character that cemented the Hollywood career of a certain Austrian bodybuilder/actor/politician

(These files are compressed .zip archives which each contain a .vpm Garmin Voice file. Use an un-Zipping utility to extract the .vpm files. If you're using a Macintosh, simply double-click the .zip files to un-Zip.)

Installing Voices

These voices can be easily installed on many Garmin navigation devices by placing the .vpm files in the "Garmin/Voice" directory on your navigation device. Here are Garmin's instructions to install voices.

Disclaimers

Use these files at your own risk. In my experience, running the custom voices caused even more crashing/instability than the Garmin devices normally experience - and they crashed a lot when they were new out of the box. (No thanks to Garmin for never fixing any crashing issues, or offering any useful suggestions to reduce or emeliorate said problems.)

Celebrity voices impersonated . . . sort of.

More

Visit my Useful Bulk blog for useful information about all kinds of things.
If you have a question specific to this project, you can email me at (you'll have to type in this email address by hand).
If you discover or create a solution that might help others, please contribute it to others on the Web. That's what it's for.