[sci.electronics] voice synthesizer package needed

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