tedk@ihuxv.ATT.COM (Kekatos) (03/25/89)
Review and Information on B.G Micro Text to Speech Board.
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COMPUTALKER SPEECH SYNTHESIZER
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from B.G. MICRO (214) 271-5546 (Dallas TX)
I purchased the B.G. MICRO COMPUTALKER board for $89.95 (price
is lower now). It can be inserted into a PC, or operated in a
stand-alone mode. I have it set-up in stand-alone operation. I
have it propped-up between books on my book shelf. I built my own
+5,+12,-12 power supply that doubles as a book-end. A power
supply is available from B. G. Micro. I use a ribbon modem cable
to connect it to one of several different computers.
This Board uses the General Instruments SPO256-AL2 and CTS256-AL2
chip set. These are the same chips that Radio Shack sells. These
chips have been mentioned in several books on voice synthesis
("Chip Talk").
The board uses one slot (for power only) and requires one serial
COM port connection. The board can except ASCII TEXT from any
computer (or terminal) with RS-232 port. There is a 1700 byte
input buffer with hardware handshake signals. The board is
shipped with a (IBMPC) Demonstration Disk, documentation, and
Schematics. The board has a speaker and a RCA type phono jack for
external speaker.
The serial port on the board can be set to one of seven baud
rates up to 9600 baud. The COMPUTALKER begins speaking the
received TEXT after it receives a CR (0x0d) character.
The TEXT to SPEECH program within the COMPUTALKER is limited but
is fairly good for the price. It has trouble with speaking
numerical text. Everything must be spelled out. Such as "$104"
must be sent to the COMPUTALKER as "1 hundred and 4 dollars".
The voice quality is good compared to some voice synthesizers. It
sounds a bit "nasal", and take some time to get use to. It is
best if there are spaces between words and difficult to
understand words are spelled "phonetically". This take some
experimenting.
I have read material on phonetic speech with PHONEMES and on
using/constructing ALLOPHONE speech with the SPO256-AL2, but I
haven't found a way to by-pass the text to speech conversion
program. From my reading, the Votracs(tm) system has control
character sequences to alter tonal voice qualities and set
control modes. This is something like what a good printer would
allow. I spoke with the guy that designed the COMPUTALKER for B.
G. MICRO, He says that there are NO special control sequences
that the voice synthesizer responds to, such to alter the modes
of operation or alter the speaking tone, etc.
Ted G. Kekatos
UUCP: ..!att!ihuxv!tedk (312) 979-0804
AT&T Bell Laboratories, Indian Hill South, IX-1F-460
Naperville & Wheaton Roads - Naperville, Illinois. 60566 USAair@anableps.berkeley.edu (03/25/89)
Covox inc. 675 conger St., Eugene, OR 97402 (503)342-1271 telex 706017 (AV ALARM UD) FAX:(503)3422-1283 voice master is the input deviice. hope this is of use. _______ _ __ _ _ __ __ Arthur Ernest Wright @ \ / / \ / / \ / \ / / / \ (503)344-7969 BUY NET \ O / /__/ /__ / / /__/ / /__ \__ ___ _ _ _ \ / / / / / / / / | | |_ / | \ /\ | /\ /_ \/ v / /__ \_/ / /__ /__ \__/ | |_ \_ | | \/ |_ \/ \/ /