Re: Echo II sound cards

[anoneds@netscape.net (Ben Yates)]

mjmahon@aol.com (Michael J. Mahon) wrote in message news:<20040329130730.15684.00000286@mb-m04.aol.com>...
> Ben Yates wrote:
> 
> >Thanks, I read the first faq. They really limit the phonemes. The TI
> >has 127 "allophones" [a further break-down of phonemes into smaller
> >units]  to choose from, and a few "pause" codes. It also has 64
> >pitches and a contouring factor or "slope" (to produce natural
> >speech). Plus it has built-in vocabulary words (about 300).
> >
> >
> >And the way words are created on the Echo seems to be a hassle.
> >On a TI, a simple PRINT #1:"HELLO, HOW ARE YOU?" in TI Basic will say
> >that phrase (if TE-II is plugged in). And using "Input" from a file
> >opened to "ALPHON" will return the "allophone" string.
> >Or, in XB with Text-to-speech disk:
> >CALL LINK("XLAT","HELLO, HOW ARE YOU",A$) ! converts speech to
> >"allophones"
> >CALL LINK("SPEAK",A$,A,B) ! Says phrase. A is pitch, B is slope
> >
> >Or, in XB CALL SAY("HELLO, HOW ARE YOU") will say it using the
> >built-in words.
> >
> >I wonder why no one has ever tried to interface a TI speech
> >synthesizer to any other type of system. I have other systems and if I
> >had time I'd love to try it.
> >But still someone would have to write a good text-to-speech system to
> >go beyond the built-in words.
> 
> The Echo _is_ a TI speech synthesizer interfaced to an Apple II,
> so I'm not sure what you're getting at here.

I mean a "TI speech synthesizer", literally, the box TI made that
plugs into the side of the 99/4A. There are a lot of those floating
around, and they can be had for cheap. The interfacing is simple. And
with this solution, you have the 300 built-in words in the speech
roms. And can send direct LPC strings.

[snip]

> 
> I don't recall if _any_ of these text-to-speech algorithms provide an
> interface to capture the phoneme/allophone/sample/LPC stream that
> they generate to control the synthesizer/DAC.  That would not be a
> very difficult hack, but my guess is that very few saw it as particularly
> useful, since text-to-speech is relatively compact, runs very fast,
> and has unlimited vocabulary.
> 
> Why, exactly, do you want to capture the stream rather than simply
> regenerate it as needed?

For languages which do not have access to text-to-speech. Say a Basic
compiler, an assembler, or even UCSD Pascal which supports LPC strings
but not a text-to-speech generator. I used such a tool to add speech
to a Poker game for a Basic compiler that supports only LPC strings,
but not the text-to-speech assembly routines (which are provided as
object code for Extended Basic only).

Ben