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From: don@zl2tnm.gp.co.nz (Don Stokes)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.dec
Subject: Re: Text-To-Speech Product Wanted
Message-ID: <V15iy2w163w@zl2tnm.gp.co.nz>
Date: 9 Mar 91 19:41:06 GMT
References: <1991Mar08.112404.5654@lut.ac.uk>
Organization: The Time Machine Room
Lines: 47

coscfi@lut.ac.uk (Simon Inwood) writes:

>        Do you have any information on DECTalk. It is an obselete product and 
> result I am having difficulties getting information, prices and availability 
> it.

I don't think it's obsolete, although it's been around for a while.
"Mature" perhaps?

Seriously, DEC's "replacement" is DECvoice, but this is a completely
different class of box, combining both synthesised and digitised voice.
The price matches the capablities -- you're talking about a rackload of
gear here.

I'm pretty sure they will still sell you a DTC03, or even maybe a DTC01.

>        What is your opinion of these products? Are there any other products o
> research projects that I should be aware of?

My experience is only with the DTC01, ie the single line tabletop model.
This was four or five years ago, so I don't know what the improvements in
the DTC03 are (anyone?).  My observations were:

        - You had to put up with a Yank accent, although the worst
          excesses could be coded around.  Of course Yank pronunciation
          was easily dealt with by either spelling phonetically or
          embedding phonetic expressions in the text.
        - The thing had trouble with proper nouns, although it got pure
          English words right pretty well most of the time.
        - The pronunciation dictionary could be extended if the above
          points were a problem.
        - Phonetic text representation was *very* flexible -- we had our
          DTC01 singing "Happy Birthday", slightly nasally, but it was
          very convincing.  Tell me if you want the text to do it ... I
          still have it around.  I have heard *much* worse....
        - The machine coped well with telephone calls, with pretty much
          no serious degradation of quality.
        - There was no way to detect the telephone line being hung up --
          you had to handle people hanging up on you with timeouts.
        - There was the odd bug in the setup, where you could change a
          parameter, have the thing shriek at you, change it back and
          find that the shriek persisted -- powering got things back
          under control.

Don Stokes, ZL2TNM  /  /                             don@zl2tnm.gp.co.nz (home)
Systems Programmer /GP/ GP PRINT LIMITED  Wellington,       don@gp.co.nz (work)
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