BRL102@PSUVM.BITNET (Ben Liblit) (12/09/89)
I am currently running a robot character in a super heros role playing game. I
would love to be able to create a robotic-sounding voice for this character.
Does anyone have any ideas for how I could rig something up to do this with
*cheap* electronic parts? I'm *not* looking for speech synthesis, just
something that would alter (modulate?) input to a microphone to give it a
metalic or robotic sound.
I am not a regular read of this newsgroup, so direct e-mail replies would be
greatly appreciated.
Ben Liblit
BRL102 @ psuvm.bitnet -- BRL102 @ psuvm.psu.edu
"Fais que tes reves soient plus longues que la nuit."kg19+@andrew.cmu.edu (Kurt A. Geisel) (12/11/89)
Altering the voice can be done in several ways. The most effective and dramatic method, the one most associated with robots in movies and TV, is by means of a device called a Vocoder. A Vocoder modulates an electronic signal (usually a harmonically rich oscillator, like a sawtooth wave) with the speech pattern of the speaker. It does this by a form of spectrum analysis- a set of N filters giving N bands of resolution. When a filter is excited by its particular band from the human voice (or any other sound, for that matter) it opens the corresponding band filter on the noise source. The result is the "robot voice" as we know it from science fiction. Unfortunately, as you may have guessed, the circuit isn't cheap or simple. You need at least eight bands for intelligable voice. The cheapest vocoder I know of is a $99 kit from PAIA Electronics, an electronic music hobbyist supplier whose address is listed below. Other methods are pitch shifting, also not cheap; flanging, which can be done cheaply be is always very dramatic. Another thing I might consider are those "voice disguiser" circuits sold in electronic countermeasures catalogs. There is a particular good set of plans (we should be able to be made fairly cheaply) sold by Consumertronics. PAIA Electronics, Inc. 3200 Teakwood Lane Edmond, OK 73013 405-340-6300 Consumertronics Co. John J. Williams MSEE PO Box Drawer 537 Alamogordo, NM 88310 - Kurt Kurt Geisel SNAIL : Carnegie Mellon University 65 Lambeth Dr. ARPA : kg19+@andrew.cmu.edu Pittsburgh, PA 15241 UUCP : uunet!nfsun!kgeisel "I will not be pushed, filed, indexed, stamped, BIX : kgeisel briefed, debriefed, or numbered!" - The Prisoner
adam@mit-amt.MEDIA.MIT.EDU (Adam Glass) (12/11/89)
I don't know how helpful this will be, but I've created robotic sounding voices from regular speech by echoing the voice with a repition rate of (around) .015 seconds and an repition strength of 97+ percent. Experiment with those values for best result. Adam
gil@limbic.UUCP (Gil Kloepfer Jr.) (12/11/89)
In article <89343.021509BRL102@PSUVM.BITNET> BRL102@PSUVM.BITNET (Ben Liblit) writes: >I am currently running a robot character in a super heros role playing game. I >would love to be able to create a robotic-sounding voice for this character. > Ben Liblit > BRL102 @ psuvm.bitnet -- BRL102 @ psuvm.psu.edu You might try one of those reverb (echo) boxes adjusted for a really small time delay. I whipped one of those things up one time with the bucket brigade chip (can't remember the number off hand) they used to sell at radio shack (it was an analog shift register with two channels, and the unit would shift the signal through a series some kind of analog flip-flop, one per clock pulse, with a total of 512 pulses to get from input to output). To make a long story short, it sounded much like what you mention. You might try one of those. ---- | Gil Kloepfer, Jr. | ICUS Software Systems/Bowne Management Systems (depending on where I am) | ...ames!limbic!gil
kenmoore@unix.cis.pitt.edu (Kenneth L Moore) (12/12/89)
In article <IZUeQ7W00WB5I34JB9@andrew.cmu.edu> kg19+@andrew.cmu.edu (Kurt A. Geisel) writes:
==>"robot voice" as we know it from science fiction. Unfortunately, as
==>you may have guessed, the circuit isn't cheap or simple.
==>
==>- Kurt
==>Kurt Geisel SNAIL :
==>Carnegie Mellon University 65 Lambeth Dr.
Hmmm. My son had a "Masters of the Universe" (He man) Castle Greyskull
and it had a voice disguiser built in. The castle and voice disguiser
cost less than $60.00. I would guess that the mark up had to be
at least 50% so the electronics had to be less than $30.00 in bulk.