You’ve had your TomTom for awhile now and that navigational voice is starting to get on your nerves - making your driving experience less than enjoyable and filling you full of the dreaded symptom known as Road Rage.
Just in case you’re looking to modify a Garmin GPS voice file you can read about how to do that here: Change Your Garmin GPS Voice
Step back for a moment and drag that GPS device into your house. You can give it a little operation and change the voice into one that’s more smooth and enjoyable. If you’ve always been a mamma’s boy you can even put the sound of her voice on it to help keep you calm during your travels without her.
Here’s how to do it:
- Hook up your TomTom to your computer with a USB connection.
- Navigate into your GPS device and copy any set of voice files to your PC to use as a base (You’ll need 1 of each .VIF, .CHK & .BMP).
- If you don’t want to overwrite the original voice file rename those 3 files giving them a different number than any other file on the TomTom system.
- Download and install The VIFTool Extraction Utility, The Audacity Audio Editor (or any audio editor that is capable of working with OGG files) and The VIFTool Compression Utility
- The VIFTool Extraction Utility is used on the command line. Navigate to the VIFTool directory and type “viftool.exe split [path to datafile directory]/dataXX.chk” replacing the XX with the number in the filename.
- Use the Audacity or OGG file editor of your choice to record new voices or tweak the existing ones in the archive (this is where you might ask for help from your mamma).
- Using the VIFTool File Compression utility re-compress your files and copy them to the voices directory on your TomTom GPS device.
Return your GPS to your vehicle and enjoy the customization that you did, drive calm, safe and enjoy the freedom of modern transportation.
If you’re not into creating new voices for your TomTom GPS System you can always purchase new voices at reasonable prices from SatNavVoices and just drag them into your TomTom GPS voices folder.
