Bad quality IPA Symbols

Question

I am trying to insert some IPA symbols using the TIPA package. The quality of these symbols seem to be lower than the other characters.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tipa}

\begin{document}

\textfishhookr\textschwa\textepsilon ea

\end{document} 

Here is the log output:

This is pdfTeX, Version 3.14159265-2.6-1.40.18 (MiKTeX 2.9.6500 64-bit) (preloaded format=pdflatex 2019.1.12)  15 JAN 2019 10:18
entering extended mode
**./simple.tex
(simple.tex
LaTeX2e <2017-04-15>
Babel <3.15> and hyphenation patterns for 75 language(s) loaded.
("C:\Program Files\MiKTeX 2.9\tex\latex\base\article.cls"
Document Class: article 2014/09/29 v1.4h Standard LaTeX document class
("C:\Program Files\MiKTeX 2.9\tex\latex\base\size10.clo"
File: size10.clo 2014/09/29 v1.4h Standard LaTeX file (size option)
)
\c@part=\count79
\c@section=\count80
\c@subsection=\count81
\c@subsubsection=\count82
\c@paragraph=\count83
\c@subparagraph=\count84
\c@figure=\count85
\c@table=\count86
\abovecaptionskip=\skip41
\belowcaptionskip=\skip42
\bibindent=\dimen102
)
("C:\Program Files\MiKTeX 2.9\tex\latex\tipa\tipa.sty"
Package: tipa 2002/08/08 TIPA version 1.1

("C:\Program Files\MiKTeX 2.9\tex\latex\base\fontenc.sty"
Package: fontenc 2017/04/05 v2.0i Standard LaTeX package

("C:\Program Files\MiKTeX 2.9\tex\latex\tipa\t3enc.def"
File: t3enc.def 2001/12/31 T3 encoding
)
("C:\Program Files\MiKTeX 2.9\tex\latex\base\ot1enc.def"
File: ot1enc.def 2017/04/05 v2.0i Standard LaTeX file
LaTeX Font Info:    Redeclaring font encoding OT1 on input line 48.
))) (simple.aux)
\openout1 = `simple.aux'.

LaTeX Font Info:    Checking defaults for OML/cmm/m/it on input line 4.
LaTeX Font Info:    ... okay on input line 4.
LaTeX Font Info:    Checking defaults for T1/cmr/m/n on input line 4.
LaTeX Font Info:    ... okay on input line 4.
LaTeX Font Info:    Checking defaults for OT1/cmr/m/n on input line 4.
LaTeX Font Info:    ... okay on input line 4.
LaTeX Font Info:    Checking defaults for OMS/cmsy/m/n on input line 4.
LaTeX Font Info:    ... okay on input line 4.
LaTeX Font Info:    Checking defaults for OMX/cmex/m/n on input line 4.
LaTeX Font Info:    ... okay on input line 4.
LaTeX Font Info:    Checking defaults for U/cmr/m/n on input line 4.
LaTeX Font Info:    ... okay on input line 4.
LaTeX Font Info:    Checking defaults for T3/cmr/m/n on input line 4.
LaTeX Font Info:    Try loading font information for T3+cmr on input line 4.

("C:\Program Files\MiKTeX 2.9\tex\latex\tipa\t3cmr.fd"
File: t3cmr.fd 2001/12/31 TIPA font definitions
)
LaTeX Font Info:    ... okay on input line 4.
 [1

{C:/Users/.../AppData/Local/MiKTeX/2.9/pdftex/config/pdftex.map}] (simple.aux
) ) 
Here is how much of TeX's memory you used:
 1239 strings out of 493312
 14138 string characters out of 3138899
 58197 words of memory out of 3000000
 4853 multiletter control sequences out of 15000+200000
 5408 words of font info for 19 fonts, out of 3000000 for 9000
 1141 hyphenation exceptions out of 8191
 34i,4n,23p,139b,113s stack positions out of 5000i,500n,10000p,200000b,50000s
 <C:\Users\...\AppData\Local\MiKTeX\2.9\fonts\pk\ljfour\public\tipa\dpi600
\tipa10.pk><C:/Program Files/MiKTeX 2.9/fonts/type1/public/amsfonts/cm/cmr10.pf
b>
Output written on simple.pdf (1 page, 11865 bytes).
PDF statistics:
 17 PDF objects out of 1000 (max. 8388607)
 0 named destinations out of 1000 (max. 500000)
 1 words of extra memory for PDF output out of 10000 (max. 10000000)

Is there a way to improve it?

EDIT: I solved the problem by switching the compiler to xelatex. In TexStudio, Option->Configure->Build->Default Compiler->xelatex

Answer 1

For whatever reason, your installation is not using the Type1 fonts that come with tipa and is falling back to bitmapped fonts instead. I can’t reproduce this bug on my system. You might try to reinstall tipa.

Consider switching to the modern toolchain, with either XeTeX or LuaTeX. If you can use the methods here to insert IPA characters as Unicode, or a character map, or copy and paste from a chart, you can just omit tipa entirely:

\documentclass[varwidth, preview]{standalone}

\usepackage{fontspec}

\setmainfont{Charis SIL}[Scale = 1.0, Ligatures = TeX]

\begin{document}
ɾəɛea
\end{document}

You could also declare

\newcommand\textfishhookr{ɾ}
\newcommand\textschwa{ə}
\newcommand\textepsilon{ɛ}

Life is simpler if you just pick a main font that contains IPA symbols. It is possible to select a different one only for them (ucharclasses might help), or to use tipa and fontspec together, in which case you’ll fall back to the legacy tipa fonts as needed. (This will have the disadvantage that copying-and-pasting from the PDF will not work, as it does with Unicode.)

If you’re stuck working with PDFLaTeX, I’d recommend as a best practice that you update to something like this:

\documentclass[varwidth, preview]{standalone}

\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{textcomp}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc} % The default since 2018
\usepackage[tone,extra,safe]{tipa}

\begin{document}
\textfishhookr\textschwa\textepsilon ea
\end{document}