Speech Synthesizers
Entry posted by mos6507
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I've actually had a lot of experience working with speech synthesizers. Back in the day I had S.A.M. That program completely captivated me. I'd say it was one of the best things I remember about the Atari 8-bit. It's also why I was sorely disappointed by the 1400XL prototype I picked up when I learned that its Votrax chip did not allow you to adjust all of the vocal attributes. I had always wished I had an Alien Voice Box because that thing supposedly could sing. I think that used the same chip as the 1400, but implemented properly.
My first dot com job I made Microsoft Agent characters. The API for these guys includes speech synth (and limited speech recognition). However, people mostly rememeber them for clippy, where they got their bad reputation.
Here is one of the guys I made using Lightwave 3D:
It's hard to describe what the business model was at that startup. They thought they could use these characters composited into analog television where they would stream in over the vertical blank. The ATI All in Wonder cards at the time had WebTV software from Microsoft that you could load up on your PC to create a kind of web sandbox with interactivity that would stream in this way. The video could then become a DirectX overlay. They were going to go around to local stations and try to sell them a special server that would constantly loop and stream data through a router which would do the VBI insertion. We ran one semi successful test with KWHY TV 22 in Los Angeles.
Anyway, we used to make these little presentations using the characters kind of like a puppet show. These were supposed to be like faux news broadcasts, so we made some "news anchor" characters like this one:
At the time I thought it was kind of neat that I was able to use some of my skills from S.A.M. in my career.
When the VecVox and AtariVox came out, it was clear to me that it was the direct successor of something like the Alien Voice Box. To date I've been disappointed with the quality of AtariVox speech in homebrew games. Even the powerup sound of the AtariVox seems off to me. It sounds like it says a-(as in cat)-tarivox instead of a-(as an cut)-tarivox. Maybe I'm ultra-sensitive to phonemes (well, SAM calls them phonemes, AtariVox calls them allophones). Maybe not everyone has the same enthusiasm for it, or the affinity. Instead of whining, though, I just volunteered to rescript the speech in Juno First for Chris Walton and so far he likes what I'm coming up with. Hopefully everyone else will as well. Maybe I'll carve a little niche for myself as the speechman for homebrews that use AtariVox. That would be nice.
UPDATE:
cd-w gave me a little 4K program so you can compose speech using a Cuttle Cart or Supercharger rather than relying on the USB interface. I also made an AtariVox header file for it that makes it easier to string allophones together. Let me know if this is useful.
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