I switched back to samantha enhanced and at higher speeds the speech is intelligible. Yay. When I set up iOS 18, I feel like I was only given a choice of a few new voices. Those did have a more natural rhythm, but lagged (too many pauses?) and at higher speeds, seemed distorted. All good now.

1 X reads at 200 words per minute
1.5 X reads at 400 wpm
2 X reads at 800 wpm

That’s some wild math. And at least for now I can’t track the 400 and not even the 800 words per minute. It doesn’t feel as clear as it used to. Maybe there’s another voice that’s better.

Even a simple drawing on the cover of a book gives the braille reader something interesting on the cover which also helps identify the book. In the case of young readers, they will likely identify a familiar image before they can fully decode the book title in braille.

ha!