“A and R Guru” — Pronunciation Picker

10 different ways to make Google TTS say the brand correctly. The target sounds like the letters A — and — R (“Ay and Arr”) followed by Guru — NOT “anr guru”, and NOT “are guru”.

How to pick: Listen to each one (tap play), then select the radio for the clip that sounds closest to “Ay-and-Arr Guru.” Your pick shows at the bottom.
1(a) say-as characters — A / R
en-US-Neural2-F

Each letter via <say-as interpret-as="characters">. Current production approach.

Whisper ASR heard: Welcome to A&R Guru.
2(b) IPA phoneme — eɪ ænd ɑːr ˈɡuːruː
en-US-Neural2-F

Full IPA <phoneme> for the whole brand: "ay and arr goo-roo".

Whisper ASR heard: Welcome to A&R Guru.
3(c) plain text — "Ay and Arr Guru"
en-US-Neural2-F

No SSML letter markup; just respelled words.

Whisper ASR heard: Welcome to I and Arranged by Guru
4(d) periods — "A. and R. Guru"
en-US-Neural2-F

Trailing periods to nudge letter-by-letter reading.

Whisper ASR heard: Welcome to A&R Guru.
5(e) em-dash / break pauses around letters
en-US-Neural2-F

"A — and — R — Guru" with short breaks between each token.

Whisper ASR heard: Welcome to A and R. Guru.
6(f) 300ms breaks wrapping each letter
en-US-Neural2-F

Bigger 300ms breaks around each spelled letter for separation.

Whisper ASR heard: Welcome to A and R Guru.
7(g) x-slow prosody on letters, normal on Guru
en-US-Neural2-F

Letters spoken at rate=x-slow, "Guru" at normal speed.

Whisper ASR heard: Welcome to A&R Guru.
8(h) plain text — "Ay-and-Are Guru"
en-US-Neural2-F

Hyphenated respelling using "Are" instead of "Arr".

Whisper ASR heard: Welcome to I and our guru
9(i) respelled — "Ay and Are, Goo-roo"
en-US-Neural2-F

Comma + "Goo-roo" respelling to force the guru vowels.

Whisper ASR heard: Welcome to I&R, Guru.
10(j) DIFFERENT voice (Studio-O) + say-as characters
en-US-Studio-O

Technique (a) but rendered with the en-US-Studio-O voice.

Whisper ASR heard: Welcome to A&R Guru.
Your pick

Selected variant: none yet

All clips say the same phrase: “Welcome to A and R Guru.” Synthesized with Google Cloud TTS (en-US-Neural2-F, except #10 = en-US-Studio-O). “Whisper ASR heard” is a rough machine-transcription proxy — trust your own ears over it.