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From: bard@jessica.stanford.edu (David Hopper)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: amiga speech synthesis
Message-ID: <1990Jun9.063338.9534@portia.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 9 Jun 90 06:33:38 GMT
References: <21526@snow-white.udel.EDU>
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In article <21526@snow-white.udel.EDU> kosma%human-torch@stc.lockheed.com (Monty Kosma) writes:
>   >
>   >it works?  Does the amiga actually have a speech synthesis chip, or is
>   >it done through audio samples of phonemes, or what?  
>		    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
>   Yes, this way. And there is very tricky software to bind these phonemes
>   together and make fluent speech of them. What is to be said about quality:
	[...]
>   -- 
>   Best regards, Dr. Peter Kittel       E-Mail to 
>   Commodore Frankfurt, Germany         rutgers!cbmvax!cbmbsw!cbmger!peterk
>
>hmm, so let's say I (or somebody) wanted to improve on this, or just fool
>around a bit.  Would having different/better samples help? Or does the 
>"binding together" software need work?  What I guess I'm asking is what
>is the weak link that makes the voice so poor.

This has indeed been done.  I have a program called 'Talk' that was written by
one Jon L. Sherling on 6/18/88.  To include the documentation (I have the 
source but I am hardly a programmer, yet):

(Note:  this is to be read by Jon's 'Talk' program, so forgive the atrocious
phonetics)

"This is the TALK program written by John Sherling on June eighteenth, nuynteen
eighty eight.  It is an attempt to reeplace the Amiga speech synthesis with my
own voice.  Digitized phownemes created with fewchersound are red in to the 
program and used in conjunction with the Amiga translaytor luybrary.

The phownemes are in standerd fewchersound format and can be reeplaced in
order to improve the voice quality or to change the voice entuyerly."

It is a valiant attempt and a fascinating-sounding voice, although I'm not
sure if it is more understandible.  Certainly, it is more humanlike.

I'd post the source, but it's 11416 bytes, and I figure this is long enough
already.

>
>monty

Dave Hopper      |      ///  Yesterday, CS.           | My favorite icebreaker:
                 |     ///    Today, Anthro/History.  | "If you were really my
bard@jessica.    | \\\///                             | friend, you'd kill me
   Stanford.EDU  |  \XX/ Tomorrow... bleeding ulcers. | now."