Path: utzoo!mnetor!tmsoft!torsqnt!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!van-bc!rsoft!mindlink!a48
From: a48@mindlink.UUCP (Ullrich Fischer)
Newsgroups: comp.music
Subject: Sound Blaster comments/queries
Message-ID: <4271@mindlink.UUCP>
Date: 29 Dec 90 19:36:32 GMT
Organization: MIND LINK! - British Columbia, Canada
Lines: 69

I've just got a Sound Blaster card for my XT.  It works as advertised.  I'm
very impressed with its capabilities especially at the price ($189.99 at Future
Shop).

However, the manual that comes with it basically gives you just enough
information to run the demo programs that come with it.  They want another $100
US for the Developer's Kit which presumeably gives you the whole story.

Are there any text files / shareware programs around which give more
details/capabilities?  Does anyone know of any deals to be had on the
Developer's kit?  Is it only available from Creative Labs Inc?

The Talking Parrot is great (it even works fine on my V20 enhanced 8Mhz XT
despite the note in the manual which says it won't work well on an XT).

The VOXKIT voice digitizer works well even using a bottom of the line (and
barrel) microphone which was rolling around under some junk on the floor of my
garage for several years.


The SBTALKER facility, however leaves a lot to be desired.  I used it to read
a downloaded file of a bunch of MINDLINK messages to me out loud.

While the SAY program is much superior to the shareware SAY for the built-in PC
speaker which has been floating around as shareware for a few years, it suffers
from a lot of pronounciation deficits.  For words it 'knows', the
pronounciation is fine, but when it tries to pronounce things like 'Msg-id:',
it's quite hard to follow unless you read along with it.

Also if SAY comes across a word it 'knows' but in all CAPS, it spells it rather
than just saying it.  Also it wastes a lot of time saying things like 'open
paren' and 'greater than' when it comes across these symbols.

It would be really nice to be able to modify SAY's internal tables so that it
pronounces capitalized words, puts in little clicks and whistles for special
characters rather than saying the name of the character (like Victor Borge's
punctuation-included speech system where he makes little farting noises (should
I be saying 'f**ting' to avoid the bad-word police? :}  )   for colon and other
appropriate noises for the other punctuation marks).  It would also be great to
be able to speed up the rate at which it reads.  I would like to be able to
expand the list of 'known' words/syllables.  Currently it pronounces
'misleading' as if the 'isl' belonged in the word 'island'.

The FMORGAN program gives a neat PC-keyboard organ (or if you buy the MIDI
connector, you can use a MIDI keyboard) but apparently with just one voice
controlled from the keyboard.  You can't seem to do chords other than the ones
supplied automatically by the accompaniment.

The Dr SBAITSO program is suspiciously like the old LISA program which has been
around since the days of S-100 bus homebrew 8080 PCs and on mainframes before
that.  The only difference seems to be that it speaks the words as it displays
them on the screen.  Other than that it's just the old LISA non-committal,
not-really-paying-attention psychiatrist program.

VOXKIT and FMORGAN seem to work fine on a HERC monitor but the Talking Parrot
and Dr. SBAITSO both require at least a CGA.  If you have  a VGA, these
programs need to run as EGA.

If anyone knows of any goodies available for this great board, I'd like to hear
of them.  e-Mail would be appreciated since I don't get time to read all these
groups all the time.    (Maybe if this SAY program can be speeded up and
streamlined as noted above, I'll be able to listen to more messages while I'm
doing other things)     -- Thanks.

   -uf

--

---    Ullrich Fischer  phone (604) 684 9371  Vancouver, BC, Canada    ---