thollowe@oucsace.cs.OHIOU.EDU (Tom Hollowell) (02/11/89)
I have recently become interested in the use of Speech Synthesis and Voice Recognition on the PC. What I want to know is are there any _good_ sounding synthesizers, and how good does the recognition work. For the sake of argument, let's say money is no object, but also I want to know about the lower priced boards, like Hearsay 1000. How much help can a VR system be in terms of time saved from typing? Any help would be greatly appreciated. E-mail to me and I will post a summary if necessary. Thanks.
cook@stout.ucar.edu (Forrest Cook) (02/11/89)
In article <449@oucsace.cs.OHIOU.EDU> thollowe@oucsace.cs.OHIOU.EDU (Tom Hollowell) writes: >What I want to know is are there any _good_ sounding synthesizers, >and how good does the recognition work. On the synthesis side: Heathkit (Griefkit :-) ) sells a PC phoneme synth board for under $100. It is based on the SP0256 chip that was featured in one of Ciarcia's Byte articles a few years ago. I have not heard the chip but it probably sounds similar to the Votrax SC-01. If anybody out there has bought one of these and has made it talk with Turbo C, I would be very interested in hearing about it. I don't know if Heath provides any interface routines, but driving the board should be fairly simple. Plusses of Phoneme Synthesis: - Low data rate < 50 B/Sec. - Easy to write English to Phoneme translator programs. (one was posted to the net a few years ago, it is ~probably~ on SIMTEL20) Minuses: - VERY mechanical sounding output, It takes a while to learn its dialect so it is not very good for dealing with the general public. - Usually only one voice type on the chip. ^ Forrest Cook (The preceding comments were my Opinions) ^ /|\ cook@stout.ucar.edu /|\ /|\ {husc6 | rutgers | ames | gatech}!ncar!stout!cook /|\ /|\ {uunet | ucbvax | allegra | cbosgd}!nbires!ncar!stout!cook /|\