aiko@xanth.UUCP (02/15/87)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: Phonemes: why not just digitize them? Summary: Expires: References: <663@goanna.oz> <5832@ukmj.ukma.ms.uky.csnet> <4111@utcsri.UUCP> <9146@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU> Sender: Reply-To: aiko@xanth.UUCP (John K Hayes) Followup-To: Distribution: net Organization: Old Dominion University; Norfolk, Virginia USA Keywords: computerized phone voices In article <9146@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU> lachac@topaz.rutgers.edu (Gerard Lachac) writes: >In that case then, how are the phone companies recorded messages done? >("The number you have reached..")??? Aren't those computer generated? > > I believe each of those words in telephone voices originated from a human voice. I'm not sure how they're stored, but all the computer does is take the recorded words and put them together to make sentences. Some of them are whole phrases ("The time is...", The number you have reached...", etc) that are put together; so they sound fairly smooth. Others, like touch-tone bank tellers, make sentences from single words - so not only is the intonation off, but you can hear a click between each word. This, combined with the redundancy of the things touch-tone tellers say, makes them pretty annoying conversationalists. If the voices were set up as completely computer generated, with an attack/decay cycle built into each phoneme (and some kind of intonation varying the emphasis on words and phonemes) - they would sound pretty good. But, I think, the cost of this over-reaches the phone company's need for these voices (I mean, "It would cost too much." :-) ...{john hayes} Old Dominion University Norfolk, Virginia USA UUCP: aiko@xanth.UUCP or: ...!seismo!decuac!edison!xanth!aiko ARPA: aiko@xanth.cs.odu.edu CSNET: aiko@odu.CSNET