I have been studying a lot of Russian recently and I have noticed today that the TTS for Russian sounds a bit different than it used to. Has there been a change to the website so that the TTS speaks slower? The poor woman sounds either like she is falling asleep or she is just bored. Of course I wouldn’t blame her; I would sound the same if I spent all my time reading individual words to Russian learners without ever getting to learn the context.
For me all TTSs sound a bit artificially - in German, in French, Spanish etc.
It is possinle to use them for the first impression of words, but I recommend to use more for the correct pronunciation the podcasts of the native speakers here in lingq.com.
My Russian girlfriend thinks the Russian TTS is drunk. Probably she is right.
Colin, I presume you are referring to the girl who does the TTS for the iPad or iPhone. For me , the girl on my computer is her usual self, a little bored, or just annoyed with me for some reason, but easy to understand. On the other hand, the girl who does the TTS for our mobile apps seems to have a drinking problem. We are looking into it. Another possible reason is what our iOS developer had to say “iOS 9 changed some setting related to TTS. I’ve fixed this and it will be in the next version.”. So either he fixed it, or we may have our TTS girl seek counselling for substance abuse problems.
I have to say that I find the TTS very useful, both for individual words, and for the sentence view on my iPad. It is no substitute however for a real voice, and only helps as a check to pronunciation, and not something I want to listen to a lot of. I can’t listen to audio books that are done TTS and when we see them in our library we usually remove them. All of this is much worse when the narrator is groggy.
Aha! I didn’t realise that there is a difference between the TTS on the website and the TTS on the app. I did not realise the app uses the native TTS, but tha makes a load of sense. I recently updated the operating systems on my iOS devices, so I guess that is what set it off.
I also think the TTS is very useful. I regularly use it for Russian words when I am reading in order to get the pronounciation, otherwise it is tough.
Drunk on vodka maybe? (And why not? :-D)
The Russian TTS or my girlfriend? Probably both…
Ich meinte natürlich den (das??) TTS! 
Was deine Freundin betrifft…na ja…muss sie sich denn wirklich MUT antrinken!?(Sorry, bad joke! :-D)
“Sich Mut antrinken” - now there is one that I learned from a Klaus Mann book more than 10 years ago! It’s getting scary how I can still remember whole sentences from German books - but only if they have something to do with sex or drugs (or in the case of “Der Vulkan” definitely both!!)