[sdiy] Speech Synthesis

[Metrophage]

As for my Speak&Spell work, I am happy to try to be of some help, but
there are several reasons why this is not easy. I did make notes of my
mods to a few such toys, but I need to find those notes. Also, there
are many PCB versions... NONE of the mods I have read about online have
worked, except for pitch-bend, which I had found anyway. Unless I can
figure out ways of identifying board versions, my notes will only
result in frustration for any of us. But I will try!

Secondly, if you mess around with the few chips in there, you will find
mods that you like! The trick is finding ways to fit them inside the
case. I have tried S&S from about ten other people, but those had not
been very musical to me. What glitches and mods one want to include are
very subjective. Put the open S&S on your lap, with batteries in it,
and play with some test clip leads to hear what bridging pins sounds
like. Some trigger sounds, but most loop sounds which are already
playing. It's like a really outlandish sort of LPC synthesis on cheeply
available hardware.

Other thing I really want to get going, I have a Digital Equipment
Corporation "DECtalk" speech synthesis ISA card intel computers, This
thing is extremely articulate because it does not use stored phonemes,
but does a complete spectral model synthesis. This is the same "Klatt"
technology which Stephen Hawking uses, but the wild thing is that it
can really sing, can sound like a chunky robot or even very much like a
real human. There are Linux drivers for the more recent PCI version.
Kind of in wishland territory, but I would love to make new drivers for
this card so I could synthesize non-speech signals as well. I have yet
to find detailed info on the drivers, though there supposedly are a few
obscure DEC docs about driver details... maybe the Linux driver source
is out there, I should check again. This hardware is gorgeous, custom
ICs like inside my TX816.

For phoneme chips, there are many inexpensive devices which were
cartridges for 8-bit computers such as C64, Intellivision, TI 99/4A,
etc... if you dig around at tag sales, flea markets, thrift stores...
you can probably find for cheap, or get somebody to dust off the one in
their closet in exchange for making a lamb vindaloo or something.

There is a gorgeous module on Grant's page, the "Voltage Controlled
Votrax Babble Box": <
http://www.musicsynthesizer.com/Modules/modules.htm >

Here is a great page with info and links about old voice synth
hardware:
< http://www.robotprojects.com/voice/voice.htm >

If you are interested in the history of synthesized speech (much of
this is relevant to DIY digital synthesis), here are is a real treat!
Dennis Klatt died an untimely death, but prior to this, he wrote a
"Review of text-to-speech conversion for English" in the Journal of the
Acoustical Society of America [ 82(3) September 1987 ], which included
an LP record of historical moments in speech synthesis. These lo-fi .AU
snippets can be browsed here: < http://festvox.org/history/klatt.html
>, or downloaded here: <
http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/eecs225d/klattsrc/everything.au.gz >,
makes an interesting listen!


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