Unfortunately, even with Eleanor, the alternate phoneme feature doesn't seem to be able to improve pronunciation reliably. Most of the time, there's hardly any perceptible difference, and even when the difference is noticeable, the same 'allophone' for a given phoneme can sound different depending on the context; see
this file for an example, where each
.m eh l
syllable has the
eh
phoneme at ALT1. While it might be possible to force a clear [l] (instead of a dark [ɫ]) when the stars align, I wasn't able to do the same with the alternate pronunciations of
ao
. In addition, changing the alt setting on a phoneme sometimes affects the pronunciation of neighboring ones. (Try observing this by placing a note with the lyrics
.s aa
and changing the alt setting of each phoneme.)
(On the bright side, I
was able to force the presence or absence of aspiration on plosives, so perhaps buying Pro was worth it.)