Re: Wargames-like Speech Synthesis on Apple ][?

[mjmahon@aol.com (Michael J. Mahon)]

John Drake wrote:

>I did a quick Google search and have poked around but have not come up
>with an answer to a nagging question.
>
>Is there any way to get an Apple ][ to sound like the computer does in
>the movie Wargames? ("Would you like to play a game?", etc. - I know
>various .wavs of the sounds are easily available)
>
>Do the Echo or Echo II boxes sound like it?
>
>I know S.A.M (Software Automated Mouth) does not.
>
>Does anyone know what was used (yes I know he wasn't using an Apple -
>I'm just curious about the voice product).
>
>And how about one that sounds like a Cylon?

Unfortunately, as pointed out in other replies, no Apple II speech
synthesizer is going to sound like your examples, because they
are not actually synthetic speech, and all Apple speech synthesizers
are of the phoneme variety.

However, it is possible to make any Apple II, from the original to
the IIgs (not using its Ensoniq chip) play any raw sample file,
which is readily extracted from any uncompressed .wav file.

I have a software-implemented DAC available from my web page
which uses the 1-bit Apple speaker (sounds best with a larger
external speaker or headphones) to reproduce 11.025 KHz 8-bit
sampled sound.  There are some compromises, but they are
barely audible, even with headphones.  I think you'll be delighted
with the result.  The compromises are:  only the high-order 5
bits of each sample are significant, introducing a bit of quantizing
noise, and 2) 11.025 KB/sec uses up a lot of the  8-bit Apple II's
memory in a hurry, so simple play routines are limited to a couple
of seconds of utterance.  I think you'll find that what you want to
do will fit nicely in this duration.

The PWM audio generator 2x oversamples, so the pulse rate
is 22.050 KHz, which is inaudible to most people.

I've provided the SoftDAC sound player in a usefule environment--
a sound editor that permits volume adjustments, cut and paste,
resampling to change pitch and duration, and support for 2:1
ADPCM compression on disk.  It runs under ProDOS and uses
lower case, but the player is independent of these assumptions.

It works on any 1 MHz Apple II, but will accomodate a Zip Chip
equipped Apple by slowing it down while playing a sound.

It's pretty easy to incorporate it into other programs, provided
that you can free up the memory space for the sampled sound
itself (which can, of course, be loaded, de-compressed, played,
and then overwritten with other sounds or data).

If you need to assemble it at a special address, I can provide
the source code.

-michael

 Email:  mjmahon@aol.com
 Home page:  http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/