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From: flaps@utcsri.UUCP (Alan J Rosenthal)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Phonemes: why not just digitize them?
Message-ID: <4123@utcsri.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 12-Feb-87 23:46:30 EST
Article-I.D.: utcsri.4123
Posted: Thu Feb 12 23:46:30 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 13-Feb-87 03:47:46 EST
References: <663@goanna.oz> <5832@ukmj.ukma.ms.uky.csnet> <4111@utcsri.UUCP> <9146@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU>
Reply-To: flaps@utcsri.UUCP (Alan J Rosenthal)
Organization: University of Toronto
Lines: 41
Summary: 

>>In a recent article sean@ukmj.ms.uky.csnet (Sean Casey) writes:
>>> {about digitized phonemes}

I, flaps@utcsri.UUCP (Alan J Rosenthal), wrote:
>>They'd sound terrible.

lachac@topaz.rutgers.edu (Gerard Lachac) writes:
>In that case then, how are the phone companies recorded messages done?
>("The number you have reached..")???  Aren't those computer generated?
>
>Also at work we have a Periphonics with a FANTASTIC female voice.

Well, I have a different phone company than you do, but I don't think this
is really on the same topic.  There is no obstacle to computer generated
speech based on sampled phonemes, but it would have to be done with features
like the attack and decay in the demo called "NewMusic" (the one with the
window entitled "Audio Demo"), and not just by pasting recordings next to
each other.

In any case, if something that always begins with "The number you have
reached" is based on sampled sound, I would assume that they recorded
someone saying "The number you have reached" rather than asking them to
say each word separately.  Does it say a telephone number?  Listen to the
relative inflexion between digits.  It sounds terrible, as I originally
said, if it's like the ones here (or like any others I've heard where
beauty of speech sound was not a design objective).

And just to reiterate, my original article was a response to an article
saying "why not just record each phoneme separately and splice them
together?  They'd probably sound better than the current narrator" or
somesuch.

-- 

Alan J Rosenthal

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