mos6502 Posted September 10, 2013 Share Posted September 10, 2013 Hello, Is the TI Speech Synthesizer module limited to its internal vocabulary only, or can it do full-on text to speech via the Terminal Emulator II cart? Thanks, Owen Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Lee Stewart Posted September 10, 2013 Share Posted September 10, 2013 Hello, Is the TI Speech Synthesizer module limited to its internal vocabulary only, or can it do full-on text to speech via the Terminal Emulator II cart? Thanks, Owen TEII cartridge gives text-to-speech capabilities with the speech synthesizer. ...lee Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dendawg Posted September 10, 2013 Share Posted September 10, 2013 IIRC you could also do phonetic text to speech in XB. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mos6502 Posted September 10, 2013 Author Share Posted September 10, 2013 Lee - thanks, I was hoping that was the case! dendawg - What's XB? Also, is there any advantage to having the Speech Editor cart? I am a musician experimenting with old-school voice synthesizers and ran into some pretty serious limitations with the Commodore Magic Voice, so I was hoping for a little more power/ease of use on the TI. -Owen Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dendawg Posted September 10, 2013 Share Posted September 10, 2013 (edited) What's XB? Baby don't hurt me, don't hurt me, no more! Sorry couldn't resist. XB is Extended Basic. There should be a link to the manual in the Development Resouces thread. Edited September 10, 2013 by dendawg Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RXB Posted September 10, 2013 Share Posted September 10, 2013 XB has the distinct advantage of Speech within programs. About 90% more easy to use then Assembly for including speech in programs. Any XB program could be updated to use speech in a few minutes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+OLD CS1 Posted September 10, 2013 Share Posted September 10, 2013 XB is mostly limited to the built-in vocabulary and toying with speech codes to build "custom" words. The Terminal Emulator II cartridge, however, provides text-to-speech bypassing the vocabulary. (Fixed after Mark immortalized my type-o.) 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marc.hull Posted September 11, 2013 Share Posted September 11, 2013 XB is mostly limited to the built-in vocabulary and toying with speech codes to build "custom" words. The Terminal Emulator II cartridge, however, provides test-to-speech bypassing the vocabulary. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RXB Posted September 11, 2013 Share Posted September 11, 2013 The text to speech version for XB works much like the Terminal Emulator II does. Nothing special about the TE 2 cart over XB they just wrote a better program for the TE 2. If you load the same thing in XB no one can tell the difference as Basic is slower then XB also. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+OLD CS1 Posted September 11, 2013 Share Posted September 11, 2013 The text to speech version for XB works much like the Terminal Emulator II does. Nothing special about the TE 2 cart over XB they just wrote a better program for the TE 2. If you load the same thing in XB no one can tell the difference as Basic is slower then XB also. Does the SPGET sub-program return the same phonems as the TE2 uses? That is primarily with what I work, as the phonems provided with TE2 are very easy to work with. When I tried to add speech to my game for XB, I found it very difficult to work with. ISTR that XB works with LPC codes, not phonems like TE2. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mos6502 Posted September 11, 2013 Author Share Posted September 11, 2013 So I can generate individual phonemes with TE2 it appears - can I control other things like speech speed? Any other vocal characteristics I can change? Thanks for all the info so far. Just ordered a speech synthesizer module and TE2 from eBay... this will be my first legit use of the TI-99/4A that I acquired somewhat accidentally from a friend who was moving. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sometimes99er Posted September 11, 2013 Share Posted September 11, 2013 Nice and Games made the synth kinda sing 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+OLD CS1 Posted September 11, 2013 Share Posted September 11, 2013 So I can generate individual phonemes with TE2 it appears - can I control other things like speech speed? Any other vocal characteristics I can change? Yes. The information is all in the manual. I designed words using phonems for my game. The problem as Rich stated is that BASIC is slow. I had to make a trade-off: slow BASIC and good speech, or fast XB and limited speech. In the end I chose to make the XB version mute. Maybe I need to convert those to LPC to make XB talk my special words, but for me it was too much to bother. Thanks for all the info so far. Just ordered a speech synthesizer module and TE2 from eBay... this will be my first legit use of the TI-99/4A that I acquired somewhat accidentally from a friend who was moving. Have fun! I would have happily parted with one of my spare TE2s Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mos6502 Posted September 11, 2013 Author Share Posted September 11, 2013 Have fun! I would have happily parted with one of my spare TE2s Thanks, if you're offering to send me one, I may still be in the market. The eBayer I was trying to get mine from is being awfully slow about answering my question about local pickup - and technically I haven't bought the cart yet - if they aren't willing to do that, I'd take you up on this. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RXB Posted September 11, 2013 Share Posted September 11, 2013 (edited) Yes. The information is all in the manual. I designed words using phonems for my game. The problem as Rich stated is that BASIC is slow. I had to make a trade-off: slow BASIC and good speech, or fast XB and limited speech. In the end I chose to make the XB version mute. Maybe I need to convert those to LPC to make XB talk my special words, but for me it was too much to bother. Have fun! I would have happily parted with one of my spare TE2s With either cart (i.e. XB or TE2) you have to load Assembly to get any real speed increase out of them. Now if I dumped the EA portion of RXB and shoved in the GPL from TE2 then XB would be the better one of the two. Both speed and the list, but EA is much more popular then Speech. The best solution is dump Basic entirely and put the EA cart and TE2 Speech list in the normal >2000 to >5FFF area of GROM. To bad GRAM is not more popular as that would make the TI killer with everything built into the system. Speech and able to run Assembly without a cart. Edited September 11, 2013 by RXB Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tursi Posted September 12, 2013 Share Posted September 12, 2013 Does the SPGET sub-program return the same phonems as the TE2 uses? That's primarily what I work with, as the phonems provided with TE2 are very easy to work with. When I tried to add speech to my game for XB, I found it very difficult to work with. ISTR that XB works with LPC codes, not phonems like TE2. No. SPGET in XB returns the speech strings that are stored in the Speech Synthesizer module for each word. It doesn't have the concept of phenomes. TE2 has a different vocabulary which ARE phenomes, so that it can create any word. In both cases the strings ultimately become LPC strings, as that's all the speech synthesizer can decode. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+OLD CS1 Posted September 13, 2013 Share Posted September 13, 2013 On a related topic, I am trying to locate to Text-to-Speech disk with the XLAT and SPEAK programs. I have misplaced a bunch of speech utilities because I had lost time to try them out. Of course, now that I want them I cannot find them. Found it. Planet-99 to the rescue! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mos6502 Posted September 14, 2013 Author Share Posted September 14, 2013 Actually tried running the Speech Synthesizer today, and I'm getting an error. According to the manual, I should be typing in the following: OPEN #1:"SPEECH",OUTPUT And going from there. But when I run this line I get an "I/O ERROR". Does this mean my speech module is dead? I've reseated it (and the TE2 cart) several times. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+OLD CS1 Posted September 14, 2013 Share Posted September 14, 2013 It could be. Do you have anything else with speech to test it, like Parsec? BTW, I played a little with the text-to-speech kit I mentioned using XB and the SPEAK and XLAT routines. It is pretty neat. Works like the TE2, but it does require memory expansion and disk drives (or a nanoPEB/CF7.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mos6502 Posted September 14, 2013 Author Share Posted September 14, 2013 It could be. Do you have anything else with speech to test it, like Parsec? The only other carts I have are TI Invaders and Munchman. Don't have cassette or disk drives either. Bummer... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tursi Posted September 15, 2013 Share Posted September 15, 2013 Actually tried running the Speech Synthesizer today, and I'm getting an error. According to the manual, I should be typing in the following: OPEN #1:"SPEECH",OUTPUT And going from there. But when I run this line I get an "I/O ERROR". Does this mean my speech module is dead? I've reseated it (and the TE2 cart) several times. Which I/O error are you getting? The number will say what the computer thinks the problem is. To confirm, you're in TI BASIC with the TE2 cartridge, yes? (There's no DSR in the speech synth itself). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mos6502 Posted September 15, 2013 Author Share Posted September 15, 2013 Yes, TE2 cart in TI BASIC - "I/O error 00". If I unplug the speech module I get the same error. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tursi Posted September 16, 2013 Share Posted September 16, 2013 0 means DSR not found. TE2 doesn't care if the synth is actually attached at the time of open. Are you typing in lowercase, by any chance? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+OLD CS1 Posted September 16, 2013 Share Posted September 16, 2013 No, but apparently I was. When I tested last night in Win994a I got an I/O error. Tonight I tried again making sure I had CAPS on and I got nothing when printing to SPEECH. I checked the settings and the Speech Synthesizer was not turned on. So my testing results to mos6502 were wrong. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Lee Stewart Posted April 5, 2014 Share Posted April 5, 2014 Does anyone know whether the text-to-speech routines on the text-to-speech disk for XB are available anywhere as assembly source code? I would like to explore the possibility of somehow including them in my fbForth cartridge. ...lee Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.