
1980's speech synthesis chips - speps
http://www.eevblog.com/forum/reviews/1980%27s-speech-synthesis-chips-%28lots-of-videos%29/
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ggambetta
Chips? Luxury! In the mid 1980s the ZX Spectrum only had a 3.5MHz Z80, a sound
chip that could only beep, and synthesis had to be done in hand-optimised
assembler! Uphill, both ways!

[https://youtu.be/3qqfNgA8_OY?t=1m58s](https://youtu.be/3qqfNgA8_OY?t=1m58s)

~~~
beagle3
C64 had a 1mhz 6502 and had way better speech in the form of SAM (software
automated mouth). The c64 had a real sound chip (SID, arguably the best of its
peers), but SAM did not use it except as a PWM output - it did the formant
synthesis in software, and used the SID only to output the resulting 4-bit
waveform.

(Which is 3 bits more than the ZX spectrum had... Or the PC effectively until
1990 or so when sound blaster became ubiquitous)

~~~
mrspeaker
Does anyone have any links/info on the algorithm used in SAM? I remember
playing with it as a kid on my friends C64 and then trying to figure out how I
could make my own version of it on my obscure (in my part of the world, at
least) SpectraVideo
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SV-318](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SV-318)
using only BASIC "Play" commands. Needless to say, I failed miserably and have
been wondering about SAM ever since!

~~~
beagle3
[https://github.com/s-macke/SAM](https://github.com/s-macke/SAM) has
everything you need to make a SAM clone. Does your SV-318 still work? :)

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SixSigma
I still have my BBC Computer from then. It has a Speech Rom [1]. It is the
voice of the first ever BBC tv news reader Kenneth Kendall. He was also in
2001: A Space Odyssey.

[1] says the chips are a TMS5220 and a TMS6100. It was pretty good fun making
the computer speak using BBC Basic.

[1] [http://www.retro-kit.co.uk/page.cfm/content/Acorn-Speech-
Syn...](http://www.retro-kit.co.uk/page.cfm/content/Acorn-Speech-Synthesiser-
Upgrade/) [2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Kendall](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Kendall)

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mwcampbell
As a legally blind person who started elementary school in the mid 1980s, the
speech synthesizer that I associate most strongly with that time period is the
Echo, installed in an Apple IIe. Here's a video demonstrating the Echo with an
Apple II+:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbZuBhT7HK4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbZuBhT7HK4)

The MESS emulator can emulate the Echo, as well as the Apple IIe itself. I
spent some time playing with that configuration on my PC, for a bit of
nostalgia.

I was shocked to learn years later that in the 1980s, the state of the art in
speech synthesis was actually DECtalk:

[http://www.festvox.org/history/klatt/part35.au](http://www.festvox.org/history/klatt/part35.au)

But DECtalk was probably too expensive for a public school system at that
time.

By the way, that clip comes from a record produced in 1986 by Dennis Klatt,
the late creator of DECtalk. It's a fascinating chronicle of the history of
speech synthesis:

[http://www.festvox.org/history/klatt.html](http://www.festvox.org/history/klatt.html)

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JonnieCache
If you want to play with these things in software, Plogue make a very detailed
emulation of many of these chips in their chipspeech synthenesizer. It's nice
because it has all the chaotic weirdness of those old algorithms but you have
complete musical control, enabling you to make them sing.

[https://www.plogue.com/products/chipspeech/](https://www.plogue.com/products/chipspeech/)

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JoeDaDude
Thanks for posting. I always wanted to emulate the original 1930's vintage
Voder speech synthesizer in software. I wonder if anyone's done it yet. The
Voder was not computer controlled, it had to be played by an operator, much
like playing a piano. [http://120years.net/the-voder-vocoderhomer-
dudleyusa1940/](http://120years.net/the-voder-vocoderhomer-dudleyusa1940/)

~~~
speps
That's what got me interested in speech synthesis as well. It seems very
possible to do in software, the patent is quite interesting to read :
[http://www.google.co.uk/patents/US2121142](http://www.google.co.uk/patents/US2121142).
Not sure when it expires these days...

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JoeDaDude
As an alternative to locating old chips, it is possible to re-create old style
speech synthesis in software with a little effort. Google Linear Prediction of
Speech and you will find many leads. Linear prediction speech synthesis was a
US vocoder federal standard at one time, standard FS-1015. It made everybody
sound like Speak'n'Spell.

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rwmj
I had an SPO256-based board for my Amstrad CPC! It was programmed using
allophones (datasheet[1]). AIUI this is a deprecated way of doing speech
synthesis, and indeed the results were quite rubbish. How do modern speech
synthesizers work?

[1]
[http://www.futurebots.com/spo256.pdf](http://www.futurebots.com/spo256.pdf)

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slackpad
There's a pretty cool large-size modular unit with the Votrax SC-01 chip in
there. The video at the bottom has a demo -
[http://www.noisebug.net/site/largemodular_syntheticsoundlabs...](http://www.noisebug.net/site/largemodular_syntheticsoundlabs/index.cfm?ID=15).

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codewritinfool
Long ago I learned the peculiar way the early speech synthesizers pronounced
the phonemes and decided that it was just like learning any other accent, so I
studied and practiced.

I can still do it today. The younger folks haven't heard it as much so they
don't understand the reference, but the people my age freak out when they hear
it.

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protomyth
The one you could buy for the TI99/4A was fun. It had BASIC commands and you
could do a lot of adjustments. I programmed one to say Dakota words better
than I could. Still a bit ticked I could get a computer to do gutturals better
than I could.

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Digit-Al
Does anyone else remember making Speak and Spell say rude words? :-)

~~~
wedowhatwedo
Back in 1984, I was at Disney world with a school trip. They had an exhibit
that looked like an arcade game that had a keyboard. You typed on the keyboard
and it would say what you typed. We almost got kicked out of Disney world for
making it say rude words. I remember exactly what the employee said. "If I
hear one more cuss word out of that thing, you are out of here."

