Re: Ensoniq capabilities

[Steven Weyhrich <a2history@gmail.com>]

On Wednesday, February 13, 2013 2:50:44 PM UTC-6, schmidtd wrote:
> On 2/13/2013 3:31 PM, Steven Weyhrich wrote:
> 
> > My Apple II History states that the Ensoniq chip is capable of speech synthesis. However, when I was questioned about this, I was unable to come up with any examples when that was actually used. Some other sound hardware released in the 1980s allowed use of phonemes to create speech, but I am not aware of any simple speech abilities in the IIGS.
> 
> >
> 
> > Does anyone know of whether the IIGS could do speech with the Ensoniq, or was my source (wherever it was) incorrect about that?
> 
> 
> 
> It can be made to mimic speech like any sound synthesis chip - witness 
> 
> S.A.M. (Software Automatic Mouth).  As an outgrowth of the SID chip, the 
> 
> Ensoniq 5503 would certainly be at least as good as that one was at 
> 
> stitching together phonemes.  But I'm not aware of any primitives that 
> 
> have anything to do with speech.  Certainly none appear in any of the 
> 
> 5503 emulators.

Thanks for all of the comments. So, speech yes, but required special software, much like making music with the Ensoniq required special software (synthLab, etc).