nebezene@ndsuvax.UUCP (Todd Michael Bezenek) (01/06/88)
I am looking for a voice synthesizer package that produces good quality voice. The North Dakota State University Amateur Radio Society is developing a microprocessor-based control unit for a remote radio site. We need a good voice synthesizer which will be interfaced to the control unit. The audio must be of a quality that will be easily understood when transmitted via radio. It is not necessary that the synthesizer package come with any support hardware whatsoever. Our budget for the interface is $100. If you know of a device that is available, please give me information concerning voice quality, price, and availability. Also let me know of any special pricing for which our student club may qualify. Sicerely, -Todd -- Todd M. Bezenek --=---+---=-- \___ Student of Electrical and ---=---+-I-=--- Electronics Engineering |\ ---=----+----=--- Bitnet: nebezene@ndsuvax | UUCP: uunet!ndsuvax!nebezene ^ Amateur Radio Station KO0N
krc@cs.purdue.EDU (Kenny "RoboBrother" Crudup) (01/07/88)
(I'm afraid to kill any of those newsgroups- later recipients may decide) In article <611@ndsuvax.UUCP>, nebezene@ndsuvax.UUCP (Todd Michael Bezenek) writes: > I am looking for a voice synthesizer package that produces good > quality voice. > ...We need a good voice synthesizer which will be interfaced to the > control unit. The audio must be of a quality that will be easily > understood when transmitted via radio. It is not necessary that the > synthesizer package come with any support hardware whatsoever. I used to play around with the General Instruments (GI) chip set. There is a member of its SP- series morpheme(?) generators masked-out to produce allophones. There is a companion chip based around one of its micros that takes regular old asynch serial and spits it out to the SP-AL2 so that you get speech from ascii. The chip has a lot of options concerning inputs/speed/etc. so you could probably do parallel (I forget.) These chips, and a 2k x 8 RAM (as a buffer) is all you need. > Our budget for the interface is $100. > Todd M. Bezenek The best part is that you can get it all from Radio-Shit for about $40. I got mine from GI a long time ago and just proto-boarded it (the chips were free) just to see what it sounded like. I did'nt have the suggested filtering, or even the right speed xtal, but it worked good enough for me. Of course, it screws up some words (like my last name, and doesnt know context like the difference between 'wind' (air) and 'wind' (watch)), but that is expected. You should have seen folks faces, though! (Shall we play a game?) Hope this helps. -- Kenny "_R_o_b_o_B_r_o_t_h_e_r" Crudup krc@arthur.cs.purdue.edu Purdue University CS Dept. W. Lafayette, IN 47907 The above is practically Official +1 317 494 7842 University Policy. So there.
lawrence@bbn.COM (Gabe Lawrence) (01/08/88)
In article (Todd Michael Bezenek) writes: > >I am looking for a voice synthesizer package that produces good >quality voice. > > The North Dakota State University Amateur Radio Society is >developing a microprocessor-based control unit for a remote radio >site. We need a good voice synthesizer which will be interfaced to the >control unit. The audio must be of a quality that will be easily >understood when transmitted via radio. It is not necessary that the >synthesizer package come with any support hardware whatsoever. > > Our budget for the interface is $100. > >Sincerely, > >Todd M. Bezenek Check out the "What's New" article on pg. 86 of the January '88 BYTE citing the new Heath HV-2000 speech processing system. It's an IBM-compatible half-size plug in card consisting of a speech synthesizer, audio amplifier, a speaker, and a 60K buffer. It will read ASCII text files or ASCII data received through the serial port and it even includes some terminal-emulation software to add speech to modem communications. Technically speaking, the HV-2000 uses a basic set of 64 phonemes for word and/or sentence construction and allows you to specify up to 4 durations, 16 rates, 4096 inflection levels, 32 transition levels, 8 transition rates, 8 articulation rates, 49 musical notes and 16 amplitude settings. Pricing for these things is $89.95/each. Not bad considering I used to work for a company which used those stupid VOTRAX beasts which costs us $400.00/each... Details and orders should be addressed to Heath Company, Dept. 350-020, Hilltop Rd., Benton Harbor, MI 49022. Please send them all net inquiries, I know nothing beyond what I've described in this posting. Having never even _seen_ one of these boards, all standard disclaimers apply. =Gabriel Lawrence= =BBN Communications= USENET: ...!harvard!bbn!ccv!lawrence INTERNET: lawrence@bbn.com
wtm@neoucom.UUCP (Bill Mayhew) (01/08/88)
If you haven't already bought the control computer, the Commodore-Amgia 500 might bear some investigation. It goes for about $US600 w/o monitor. It has a built-in 880K 3.5 inch disk drive. It aslo has two 8-bit DACs. The DACs can be controlled to output sound via a DMA channel under CPU control. The Amiga O/S comes with a utility program called "say" that does text-to-speech conversion directly to the internal DACs. The quality of the speech is very good and the program has a variety of tunable parameters to allow the user to optimize the speech sound quality. The Microsoft Basic interpreter that comes with the system can also output speech via a "say" statement. You have your choice of using phonetics or using the text-to-speech algorithm. So, if you still need the computer, this speech synthesizer is essentially free. --Bill
peter@catuc.UUCP (Peter Collins) (01/09/88)
In article <5854@ccv.bbn.COM>, lawrence@bbn.COM (Gabe Lawrence) writes: > In article (Todd Michael Bezenek) writes: > > > >I am looking for a voice synthesizer package that produces good > >quality voice. > > > > Check out the "What's New" article on pg. 86 of the January '88 BYTE citing > the new Heath HV-2000 speech processing system. It's an IBM-compatible > half-size plug in card consisting of a speech synthesizer, audio amplifier, > a speaker, and a 60K buffer. It will read ASCII text files or ASCII data ..... I've played with this board at a local Heath store. Not bad for the price but be carefull - the pc board itself is not of that great quality. The local Heath Tech and myself managed to inadvertantly lift several traces off the board while trying to debug the board after he assembled the kit. I hope Heath comes out with a new batch of higher quality boards. > =Gabriel Lawrence= > =BBN Communications= peter collins Computer Automation