r/ElevenLabs

/title

Hey everyone! We run a children's stories app — our library is narrated in Polish by professional voice actors. We're now looking at bringing it to other markets (starting with English), and I'll be honest, the budget isn't unlimited — so before we commit to professional narrators for the new markets, we're testing what's possible with AI narration on ElevenLabs. The clips below are just an early test to find the right approach.

We've used ElevenLabs for a while for our user-generated stories, but this time we went much deeper into v3, Voice Design and text-to-dialogue. The demo above is the same ~30s opening scene read 7 different ways — each clip lists the model and the exact voice IDs.

I'd really value the community's opinion on three things:

1. Voice type — for a warm kids'-book read, what gives the best results: professional voice clones / library voices, or fully designed synthetic voices (Voice Design v3)? We designed our whole cast with Voice Design v3 (clean, native to v3, fully ours) — curious whether that matches your experience or you'd go a different route.
2. Single narrator vs full-cast — one voice acting out all the characters (classic audiobook), or a distinct voice per character via text-to-dialogue? Which feels better for 4–10 year olds?
3. If full-cast — keep or drop the dialogue tags (the "he said / she asked" bits)? Dropping them (the voice change carries it) feels like an audio drama; keeping them is more audiobook. Genuinely torn.

Any impressions on which clips sound most natural — or most off — are hugely appreciated. Thanks! 🙏

Demo: https://dawidope.github.io/11labs-narration-test?lang=en&theme=dark

I'm using a paid account on Elevenlabs. Has anyone else noticed a very recent deterioration in quality of the voices? I have been using TTS a lot recently and at first I was amazed at how nuanced the verbalization was. I was using the text to speech app and found that giving mood instructions within the [brackets] worked great. Well...just yesterday I went to use TTS and found I needed to switch to Studio to access this function. It only allowed V2 so [bracketed] instructions weren't allowed. The voices I have used up until then suddenly became monotone and robotic to a laughable degree. At one point one of my characters had to alert others to a fire . Despite three exclamation points the vocalization sounded like someone asking to pass the butter at a dinner table. Totally unusable. I am paying a lot to use this service and I fear that they are caving into some corporate budget cutting while screwing the user. Someone having the same issue?

It's been perfect for me until today, but now it has almost no emotion no matter what settings or prompts I use. I've already spent around 40,000 credits trying to get it to sound like it did yesterday with no luck. Is anyone else having this issue in V3, or did something change?

I’m about to purchase an ElevenLabs plan so I can use my wife’s voice to narrate children’s audiobooks for our daughter.
My wife will be traveling for a couple of weeks, and I thought hearing her voice while listening to bedtime stories might help our daughter cope with being apart from her.
Before I start, I’d love to know if there are any best practices for creating the audio files so I don’t waste credits.
I’ve seen people mention using brackets to indicate tone or emotions (for example, [whisper] or [excited]). Is this actually effective for audiobooks?
Also, is it better to generate one audio file per chapter, or should I generate the entire book as a single audio file?
Any other tips for getting the most natural and expressive narration would be greatly appreciated!

Whenever I try to generate text from speech on ElevenLabs from youtube or url, I get the following error after I click on 'Transcribe'. Does anyone know how to fix it?

https://preview.redd.it/lbilubdz2cah1.png?width=394&format=png&auto=webp&s=edf1ea790cea3991410c0f99e052e8d8f095fad4

First, ChatGPT told me about ElevenLabs and I will be eternally grateful. I have progressive disease affecting my larynx, along with vocal cord dysfunction that makes speaking difficult and medically dangerous for me. This is a recent, and very distressing diagnosis for me.

Finding ElevenLabs has opened doors for me, because I am using it as an assistive communication program. I just learned how I can use it in phone calls and I am so thankful.

I know people use ElevenLabs in different ways, but for me, using it this way is making communication easier...and I can hear my voice, my old voice that was recorded before things started going so bad for me, which is lovely and devastating at the same time.

Thank you so much!!!

Hi all!

When I first got the app, I could upload epubs no problem but for a few months now, from the app all epub files are greyed out. I don't even get an error because I can't even click on them to upload.

There are no protections on the file and it concerns all epubs.

I can upload epubs from PC no problem, but it's rather inconvenient *every* single time having to open my laptop.

HTML and pdfs uploads work but:

- on pdfs the formatting gets messed up, italics don't show, it cuts off line breaks ect.

- on HTML it only uploads the core text and I don't get chapter titles, chapter breaks or anything anymore. And it still messes up the formatting a lil' even if not as much as on pdf.

Anyone else have that issue and know what the problem is? And how I can't fix it. I'm on Android if that makes a difference, pixel 10.

Thank you 💜

Edit: forgot to add that I did also try the desktop version on the website on my phone and the issue remains

Best ai voice character for documentaries short videos

I have many voice characters in Eleven Labs but when I generate the voice, the voice becomes very robotic. It makes a robotic sound. Does anyone have a solution for this?

I have already tested many methods.

So it's basically that trending old or middle aged man voice.. mostly used in narrator or advice videos..

Eg

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DZ4\_CJWTW1Y/?igsh=MWUwc3psZWh5NTc1aA==

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DZOwYK-ozxo/?igsh=MWd5NzQ5em9xeGp1bA==

Hello. I’m using ElevenLabs to generate German voiceovers for my scripts. I have selected voices that support German and also tested different models, but my audience keeps telling me that the pronunciation does not sound natural or accurate.

Could anyone tell me if I might be missing something or doing something incorrectly? If possible, could you also recommend a few voices that have native-level German pronunciation and grammar?

Thank you very much for your help.

A week ago I sent an email to elevenlabs support asking for help unlocking my account.

I went to the subscription page to upgrade from the $20 to $100 plan. As I clicked upgrade, I got a perfectly overlayed, perfectly timed popup suggesting the $300 plan which I accidentally clicked on. This didn't even have a confirmation screen, it took me directly to the payment processor and attempted to authorize the payment. I hit the cancel option, but that crashed the page. After reloading the page, there is an unpaid invoice error blocking all of my actions. I have been unable to use my account and existing credits, as I have this "unpaid invoice" for $300 that I never wanted.

This is infuriating on so many levels - the popup placement and timing, the lack of a purchase confirmation screen, the fact that I'm locked out of using the existing credits I already paid for, the fact that there's nothing I can do within my account/subscription settings to get rid of this error, the fact that I haven't heard back from elevenlabs for a week and counting still, and the fact that this all stemmed from me genuinely trying to upgrade my subscription in the first place.

Not really sure what to do at this point. Has anybody had a similar experience?

I’m building my first youtube video using an elevenlabs voice and have run into a problem with consistency. Curious if anyone else has faced this or found a solution.

My video is about 9-10 minutes long, so I’m breaking up the voice generation into several clips, probably about 10 in all. The reason is that i have to make several changes to make sure pronunciation and emphasis is correct, so i work in relatively brief chunks of about one minute each.

The problem is, each i run my text through elevenlabs the voice sounds a bit different. Right now I’m editing a scene where two different elevenlabs clips come together, and it sounds like a totally different person! Are there some settings i can apply inside elevenlabs to improve consistency?