Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!att!pacbell.com!mips!sdd.hp.com!usc!samsung!olivea!apple!uokmax!d.cs.okstate.edu!ong
From: ong@d.cs.okstate.edu (E. Teng Ong)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
Subject: Re: Sound Blaster comments/queries
Message-ID: <1990Dec30.123625.3020@d.cs.okstate.edu>
Date: 30 Dec 90 12:36:25 GMT
References: <4268@mindlink.UUCP>
Sender: ong@d.cs.okstate.edu (ONG ENG TENG)
Organization: Oklahoma State University
Lines: 39

From article <4268@mindlink.UUCP>, by a48@mindlink.UUCP (Ullrich Fischer):
> 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).

Market price now is as low as $145 mail-order.

> 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.

Most developer's kit from other companies (say Microsoft?) cost double or
triple.  Creative Labs, I was told, is a hardware company and would 
prefer to deal with software only when necessary (like with 3rd-party
software developers). 

> 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.

The speech synthesizer (as in SAY) is made by FirstByte licensed to 
Creative Labs.  You might wanna write to them.