[sdiy] Texas Instruments LPC Speech Chips

[brianw]

Keep in mind that the NeXT hardware models all have a Motorola 56000 DSP, as well as the m68k.

I remember rsynth, but I do not recall whether it took advantage of the DSP.

I just re-read your email, and see that you ported rsynth to NeXTSTEP, so I guess you would remember if you used any of the DSP resources.

Brian Willoughby

p.s. I'm still trying to remember the name of the NeXTstep software that modeled the human vocal tract, with a graphical depiction that you could manipulate on the screen with the mouse in real time to synthesize vocalizations (but, alas, words were a bit too complex to recreate with mouse drags). I think it was called GRASP. Something like Graphical Representation Audio Synthesis something-er-other.


On Sep 1, 2026, at 5:03 AM, Ben Stuyts wrote:
> That reminds me of an old project I ported to NeXTSTEP back in 1994. It was called rsynth, an early open-source text-to-speech system that converts text to phonemes. It generates speech using a Klatt-style parametric formant synthesizer.
> 
> So, certainly not a discrete solution, but it was very small and fairly intelligible. Reminded me a bit of the Votrax and TI voices. I wonder if it could run on a modern microcontroller at reasonable speed. My NeXTcube had a 25 MHz 68040, and it wasn’t a real time experience...
> 
> I see it has been updated as recent as 2005 ;-) https://sourceforge.net/projects/rsynth/
> 
> Ben