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.