Is it feasible to make a new ECS expansion today?

[+DZ-Jay]

11 minutes ago, 8bitwidgets.com said:

yea i dug deeper and yea different chips for sure. 

 

and the ECS controller ports go through the same AY chip?  I'm curious if joysticks hooked up to the ECS would work with any game.  Seems like it would be possible, but not sure how easy it would be to rig it. 

 

The AY chip is the I/O chip of the Intellivision.  The ECS provides another AY chip, so another I/O interface -- that includes both producing sound ("O") and accepting controller input ("I").

 

You want to add two more hand-controller (of whatever flavour) to the Intellivision?  Add yet another AY chip.  I'm not a hardware guy, so I do not know how that is done, but I think that's the basic principle.

 

The ECS hand-controller ports are available to any game that reads them.  As you may imagine, all the old games not made specifically for the ECS do not read those ports because they are not even aware that they are there.

 

Modern homebrews typically also do not pay attention to those ports.  They could, it's just that most programmers ignore the ECS for the reasons already established:

• Not every one has one, so depending on it limits its exposure.
• Even if you could expect everyone to have one, what do you get out of it?
  • 2K of 8-bit RAM (meh.)
  • Two more controllers for additional players that you cannot find (blah!)
  • The world's worst chicklet keyboard (ugh!).
  • An extra AY chip (cool, but not really a world shaking necessity).

 

(By the way, when you say "joysticks," I am assuming you mean a hand-controller of the typical kind or some other compatible device.  If you literally mean an actual joystick from a PC or console, then it most likely won't work unless there is some signal translation to make it compatible.)

 

    -dZ.

[8bitwidgets.com]

42 minutes ago, DZ-Jay said:

You want to add two more hand-controller (of whatever flavour) to the Intellivision? 

i'm just thinking of ALL of those 2609 users out there and it's ilk of wired controllers to have a simple solution to give controllers to them like Flashback (with adapter), Sears, INTV II, Longplay, and any other options out there.  I know there are hardware mods for those inclined to do that and i know it's not rocket science but i still bet there are a lot of people out there that would not or have not gotten around to doing this operation.  

 

44 minutes ago, DZ-Jay said:

old games not made specifically for the ECS do not read those ports

ok and yea that was my core question so thank you for confirming that.  so in reality there is no way to achieve this without writing new games to address it.  I figured this could be the case, but I just didn't know for sure.  If the ECS joystick ports did work with original games that would answer that, but they don't so that's great to know.  

 

45 minutes ago, DZ-Jay said:

They could, it's just that most programmers ignore the ECS for the reasons already established

yea doing this for only future games is not realistic.  i was hoping it would be something retroactive.

 

46 minutes ago, DZ-Jay said:

I am assuming you mean a hand-controller

yes that's right . I was looking only for a way to send joystick signals (INTV style) through the joystick port..  i thought maybe there is an "easy" way to send the signal from the cartridge port to the input of the AY chip..  i mean the intellivoice can send audio into the AY correct?  I figure since the sound comes through the audio of the intellivision, not an external audio jack it must somehow get mixed into the other game signal.. 

 

 

[+DZ-Jay]

1 hour ago, 8bitwidgets.com said:

i'm just thinking of ALL of those 2609 users out there and it's ilk of wired controllers to have a simple solution to give controllers to them like Flashback (with adapter), Sears, INTV II, Longplay, and any other options out there.  I know there are hardware mods for those inclined to do that and i know it's not rocket science but i still bet there are a lot of people out there that would not or have not gotten around to doing this operation.  

 

Right.  The only way to do this is to provide your own input hardware controller and interface with the bus.  An AY offers the I/O interface, and hooking it up to the bus will give you both extra sound channels and extra hand-controller ports.  The ECS does this already, but to avoid the ECS you'll have to come up with a hardware device that does pretty much the same thing (at the hardware level, ignoring the extra RAM and EXEC).

 

 

1 hour ago, 8bitwidgets.com said:

ok and yea that was my core question so thank you for confirming that.  so in reality there is no way to achieve this without writing new games to address it.  I figured this could be the case, but I just didn't know for sure.  If the ECS joystick ports did work with original games that would answer that, but they don't so that's great to know.  

 

Ah, so you wanted to automatically turn single-player games into multi-player games?  Well, I thought it would be obvious that this is not possible without altering the game code.

 

If the game code reads one or two controllers, it probably only looks at the built-in ports on the Master Component.  If the game code reads four-controllers or two controllers and/or the keyboard (like one of those ECS games), then it will expect the additional two ports at the same addresses the ECS exposes them.

 

Hmm ... Now that I think of it, I do not think that's what you meant.  I believe that what you are looking to do is to plug-in some device that offers two hand-controllers which could replace the original two of a 2609 Master Component.  That is a neat idea.

 

Alas, I do not think it would work, though.  I do not think you can mask or overload or bank-switch (or whatever) the built-in port address range in order to replace them.  I really do not know, so perhaps a hardware guy can offer some insight.

 

1 hour ago, 8bitwidgets.com said:

yea doing this for only future games is not realistic.  i was hoping it would be something retroactive.

 

Gotcha.  Yeah, it would be cool if you could just plug-in an adapter and have it replace the built-in hand-controllers with whatever you plug in it.  It could help all of us who have 2609 Master Components with one or two controllers with worn-out contacts.

 

1 hour ago, 8bitwidgets.com said:

yes that's right . I was looking only for a way to send joystick signals (INTV style) through the joystick port..

 

If you focus on new games only, then the world's your oyster:  you can do whatever you want and have programmers adopt it if they wish.  For backwards compatibility, the only way to do it would be to essentially have the new ports "take over" the same address space as the built-in hand-controllers so that the program would just be redirected to the new device without even knowing about it.  I do not know if that is possible.

 

1 hour ago, 8bitwidgets.com said:

i thought maybe there is an "easy" way to send the signal from the cartridge port to the input of the AY chip..  i mean the intellivoice can send audio into the AY correct? 

 

That's different.  I believe there is an audio "pass-through" pin in the cartridge port that allows an external signal to be mixed in with the main onboard audio output.  (There is a similar "pass-through" pin for video in the Intellivision II, which is what allows the System Changer to render its output through the Master Component's video signal.  The original 2609 Master Component requires a modification to support this.)

 

1 hour ago, 8bitwidgets.com said:

I figure since the sound comes through the audio of the intellivision, not an external audio jack it must somehow get mixed into the other game signal..

 

It does, but it's just the audio output.  A cartridge (or some other plugged in device) can send any hand-controller signal through the regular cartridge port data bus, but it will not be "seen" as the original controller ports unless it is at the same address; and if that is not possible, then it can only "see" it if it is purposely looking for it.

 

    -dZ.

[8bitwidgets.com]

10 minutes ago, DZ-Jay said:

Ah, so you wanted to automatically turn single-player games into multi-player games?

no sorry i just mean i want to be able to provide two physical db9 ports from an expansion that directly send messages like the wired controllers to effectively parallel them to allow a 2609 (without mods) to use say.. a longplay or what have you.  Nothing more..  so say Night Stalker could be played with a longplay through this adapter..  

12 minutes ago, DZ-Jay said:

If the game code reads four-controllers

I agree it's tough enough to find one in-person friend to play with let alone 4.   No interest in 4 player support

 

12 minutes ago, DZ-Jay said:

I believe that what you are looking to do is to plug-in some device that offers two hand-controllers which could replace the original two of a 2609 Master Component.  That is a neat idea.

that's it (i'm not reading the whole post before commenting.. lol)  

 

13 minutes ago, DZ-Jay said:

I really do not know, so perhaps a hardware guy can offer some insight.

yea let's see.. who do we know who has intimate knowledge of intellivision hardware?  @decle any thoughts on this?     TL;DR..  making a cartridge expansion port that gives a player two DB9 ports to allow longplay / sears / intv ii controllers to plug in and control any existing game.  

 

16 minutes ago, DZ-Jay said:

It could help all of us who have 2609 Master Components with one or two controllers with worn-out contacts.

damn straight

 

16 minutes ago, DZ-Jay said:

If you focus on new games only, then the world's your oyster

very small world at that point..  lol

 

17 minutes ago, DZ-Jay said:

which is what allows the System Changer to render its output through the Master Component's video signal

ah interesting.  good to know.

 

19 minutes ago, DZ-Jay said:

hand-controller signal through the regular cartridge port data bus

right that makes sense.. it's real data.. not just an analog audio signal that has no processing to be done to it.  

[+DZ-Jay]

3 minutes ago, 8bitwidgets.com said:

(i'm not reading the whole post before commenting.. lol)  

 

No worries, I do the same sometimes.

 

3 minutes ago, 8bitwidgets.com said:

yea let's see.. who do we know who has intimate knowledge of intellivision hardware?  @decle any thoughts on this?

 

Maybe @5-11under. @Lathe26, or @mr_me, who have offered some hardware insights in the past.  Obviously, it would be great to hear from @intvnut as well, although I do not know if he even reads the forum anymore.

 

I think it's a great idea and worth exploring, although I have a feeling that there are a set of addresses that cannot be overlayed with bank-switching or whatever.  (I do not know enough about hardware to understand how that sort of thing works.)

 

3 minutes ago, 8bitwidgets.com said:

very small world at that point..  lol

 

Alas, indeed.

 

     -dZ.

[8bitwidgets.com]

18 minutes ago, DZ-Jay said:

that cannot be overlayed with bank-switching or whatever. 

yea someone far more knowledgeable needs to weigh in on this to see if it's worth even digging deeper into it.  If it is in fact possible, I would very much like to pursue it.  

[First Spear]

You can tell from my posts that I am not a hardware guy, I have to read what's in the Intellivision Wiki 3+ times (eg https://wiki.intellivision.us/index.php/Cartridge_Port) each time I want to understand something.  

 

 

That is 1970's technology, 16 inches wide. I was imagining a 2024 device that would plug inline like both of those devices, but maybe 5 inches wide instead (and not use another wall wart AC). I was imagining that something Pi-based and single purpose emulating those two things would be low power and inexpensive, especially if there is emulated support for the keyboard but no actual hardware to do that (adding manufacturing/testing complexity and cost).

 

My unscientific observation in this community and the other online ones is that everyone who really wants an ECS or Intellivoice has had one for years, but in addition to that group there are many casual Intellivision owners especially on the Facebook groups who ask "where can I get an Intellivoice to play B-17 Bomber", and those people could be directed to low cost new hardware near the price point of a 42-yo Intellivoice and also be able to hear better music from new games. In my (limited) view, 6 total AY audio channels adds a lot of capability and if everyone making games could use the extra channels they would. The ECS titles are played less than the voice titles and I don't think there are a lot of people looking for them, so the SubECS draw could really be good music for now with voice and the promise of expansion.

 

[+Lathe26]

15 hours ago, DZ-Jay said:

 

I think they are different.  As I recall, the Odyssey2 chip supports only allophone synthesis, while the one in the Intellivoice supports formant synthesis and a form of LPC (Linear Predictive Coding) synthesis.  Something like that.

 

The O2 uses basically the same chip (slightly different internal ROM of LPC audio samples).  The bigger difference are the support chips that connect to the SP0256's special serial bus.

• On the Intellivoice, the SPB640 is just fancy RAM that allows the Intellivison to load custom LPC audio.  The Intellivoice is the only product I know that uses any of GI's offered RAM chips, such as the SPB640 chip (10-bits wide) or the SPB512 chip (8-bits wide).
• The O2's The Voice instead uses quite a few ROM chips.  It uses SPR016 chips or SPR128 ROM chips (going from memory).

[+Lathe26]

5 hours ago, DZ-Jay said:

 

Modern homebrews typically also do not pay attention to those ports.  They could, it's just that most programmers ignore the ECS for the reasons already established:

• Not every one has one, so depending on it limits its exposure.
• Even if you could expect everyone to have one, what do you get out of it?
  • 2K of 8-bit RAM (meh.)
  • Two more controllers for additional players that you cannot find (blah!)
  • The world's worst chicklet keyboard (ugh!).
  • An extra AY chip (cool, but not really a world shaking necessity).

 

Don't forget that "all important" half-duplex serial port!  It can go as fast as 1200 baud!  </sarcasm>

 

One small difference between the AY sound chip in the Intellivision vs the ECS is that the Intellivision's can only read inputs from the controllers while the ECS's can both read and write to/from the controllers.  The normal game controllers only need input support, but the typing keyboard and the music keyboard need both input and output support.

[+Lathe26]

2 hours ago, 8bitwidgets.com said:

yea let's see.. who do we know who has intimate knowledge of intellivision hardware?  @decle any thoughts on this?     TL;DR..  making a cartridge expansion port that gives a player two DB9 ports to allow longplay / sears / intv ii controllers to plug in and control any existing game.  

 

 

If you're looking to override the Intellivision's built-in controller ports with an external add-on, it definitely can be done.  The 3 bus control lines of BDIR, BC0, and BC1 are designed such that external devices can mask them off with the intention of disabling internal hardware in favor of the add-on's hardware.  You would only need to do this for 2 or 3 register addresses that the AY supports since you're only looking to replace the controller ports and not the whole AY sound chip.

[+DZ-Jay]

1 hour ago, Lathe26 said:

The O2 uses basically the same chip (slightly different internal ROM of LPC audio samples).  The bigger difference are the support chips that connect to the SP0256's special serial bus.

• On the Intellivoice, the SPB640 is just fancy RAM that allows the Intellivison to load custom LPC audio.  The Intellivoice is the only product I know that uses any of GI's offered RAM chips, such as the SPB640 chip (10-bits wide) or the SPB512 chip (8-bits wide).
• The O2's The Voice instead uses quite a few ROM chips.  It uses SPR016 chips or SPR128 ROM chips (going from memory).

 

Ah, so is the difference that the Intellivoice is set up to use custom samples, while the O2 can only play what's in ROM?

 

1 hour ago, Lathe26 said:

Don't forget that "all important" half-duplex serial port!  It can go as fast as 1200 baud!  </sarcasm>

 

LOL!  I completely forgot about that.  I know you are joking, but could there be any useful application for that serial port nowadays?

 

1 hour ago, Lathe26 said:

One small difference between the AY sound chip in the Intellivision vs the ECS is that the Intellivision's can only read inputs from the controllers while the ECS's can both read and write to/from the controllers.  The normal game controllers only need input support, but the typing keyboard and the music keyboard need both input and output support.

 

Ah, that's right.  What about the Intellivision II?  Can it use the ECS keyboard?

 

1 hour ago, Lathe26 said:

If you're looking to override the Intellivision's built-in controller ports with an external add-on, it definitely can be done.  The 3 bus control lines of BDIR, BC0, and BC1 are designed such that external devices can mask them off with the intention of disabling internal hardware in favor of the add-on's hardware.  You would only need to do this for 2 or 3 register addresses that the AY supports since you're only looking to replace the controller ports and not the whole AY sound chip.

 

Yay!  Thanks for confirming.  I think this could be a very good enhancement.  Neat-o!

 

     -dZ.

[+Lathe26]

43 minutes ago, DZ-Jay said:

Ah, so is the difference that the Intellivoice is set up to use custom samples, while the O2 can only play what's in ROM?

 

 

LOL!  I completely forgot about that.  I know you are joking, but could there be any useful application for that serial port nowadays?

 

 

Ah, that's right.  What about the Intellivision II?  Can it use the ECS keyboard?

The O2 can only play what is in ROM.  To it's credit, it has the largest set of voice samples I've seen in any period hardware.

 

The serial is half duplex, which limits its usefulness.  Further is very slow with a max baud of 1200 which is also limiting.  It can be used but only in certain cases.

 

I don't think the ECS keyboards can be used on the Inty II.  I believe it uses the same AY-3-8914 the original Inty does.  This should be confirmed by someone.  The ECS uses the -8916 or -8917 chips for comparison.

[+DZ-Jay]

43 minutes ago, Lathe26 said:

The serial is half duplex, which limits its usefulness.  Further is very slow with a max baud of 1200 which is also limiting.  It can be used but only in certain cases.

 

A text-only BBS.  I would have killed for 1,200 bauds back then.

 

      -dZ.

[+5-11under]

3 hours ago, DZ-Jay said:

 

A text-only BBS.  I would have killed for 1,200 bauds back then.

 

      -dZ.

Back in the day, I could read faster than 300 baud, but 1200 was plenty fast enough.

[First Spear]

Call it “The Soundmeister” and while it emulates an ECS and Intellivoice and does cartridge pass-through, that’s it for $50.  Then another inline box called “The Controlmeister” plugs inline also and that has the controller override capability and also classic ECS keyboard capability $70.

[8bitwidgets.com]

21 hours ago, First Spear said:

Pi-based and single purpose emulating

this takes a fair amount of heavy programming as far as I can tell..  

 

19 hours ago, Lathe26 said:

Don't forget that "all important" half-duplex serial port!

well if we get that Fujinet for the Intellivision that would give us internet access!

 

19 hours ago, Lathe26 said:

but the typing keyboard and the music keyboard need both input and output support.

do these ports provide power?  

 

19 hours ago, Lathe26 said:

You would only need to do this for 2 or 3 register addresses that the AY supports since you're only looking to replace the controller ports and not the whole AY sound chip.

yea that makes sense too about this because the intellivoice had those ports for wireless controllers!  i keep forgetting that hidden gem..  i opened my port to see that mine has the pins!  

 

19 hours ago, Lathe26 said:

The 3 bus control lines of BDIR, BC0, and BC1 are designed such that external devices can mask them off with the intention of disabling internal hardware in favor of the add-on's hardware. 

what would be involved from the expansion side of things to disable those controllers to allow the external ones to work?  a controller chip or something?  I'm working with some smart guys on a project and I'd like to see what it would take to steer them in this direction.  The #1 focus would be making a way to allow aftermarket / removable controllers to play on original unmodded wired systems like the 2609..  

Additionally opening up support for post INTV controllers would be a +1 idea.. but for that to be possible, power would be needed to drive them which the original ports (wired or removeable) lack.

 

17 hours ago, Lathe26 said:

To it's credit, it has the largest set of voice samples I've seen in any period hardware.

yea i have a collection of wavs from that set.. there are a lot of sounds there.  Eh.. Rr..  Ah..  etc..

 

Does the Voice also rely on filters like the Intellivoice to help massage the tones?  

 

 

 

[+Lathe26]

1 hour ago, 8bitwidgets.com said:

do these ports provide power? 

No real power.  You could hold one of the GPIO pins high and maybe get 10-20 mA, but that is not recommended.  Also, that suggestion isn't compatible with the existing Inty controllers or keyboards.

 

1 hour ago, 8bitwidgets.com said:

what would be involved from the expansion side of things to disable those controllers to allow the external ones to work?  a controller chip or something?  I'm working with some smart guys on a project and I'd like to see what it would take to steer them in this direction.  The #1 focus would be making a way to allow aftermarket / removable controllers to play on original unmodded wired systems like the 2609.. 

It would require a controller, a PAL, or an FPGA (last one is major overkill).  You will need deep knowledge of the CP1610 bus timings and know the Intellivision cartridge pinout functionality to do it.

1 hour ago, 8bitwidgets.com said:

yea i have a collection of wavs from that set.. there are a lot of sounds there.  Eh.. Rr..  Ah..  etc..

 

Does the Voice also rely on filters like the Intellivoice to help massage the tones? 

Those sounds are just the phonemes in the plain SP0256-AL2.  If you don't have other sounds like explosion or English word phrases, then you don't have the complete O2 The Voice set that come from its ROMs.

 

No idea about the filters on The Voice.

[8bitwidgets.com]

18 minutes ago, Lathe26 said:

but that is not recommended. 

yea no i wouldn't risk that..  

 

19 minutes ago, Lathe26 said:

Also, that suggestion isn't compatible with the existing Inty controllers or keyboards.

yea in my mind i was thinking of alternate ports for power.. maybe even ones that don't follow DB9 standards..  and then original DB9 ports for intv..   

 

21 minutes ago, Lathe26 said:

You will need deep knowledge of the CP1610 bus timings

yea this might be a bridge too far, but still good to know and pass on the info, thank you!

 

22 minutes ago, Lathe26 said:

If you don't have other sounds like explosion or English word phrases

there were some phrases in the mix.. each sound sounds like it was recorded on an open mic.. probably manually triggered each sound and recorded from the speaker of the voice..  no idea really..  the zip is at home.  

 

 

[+DZ-Jay]

1 hour ago, 8bitwidgets.com said:

Does the Voice also rely on filters like the Intellivoice to help massage the tones?  

 

 

 

What do mean, “to help massage the tones”?  The Intellivision supports three modes of speech synthesis:  Allophones (this is the typical “robot voice), formant (this is completely synthetic human sounding voice, produced by simulating the vocal tract; I believe the built in RES ROM voices, such as numbers use this), and “linear Predictive Coding” (LPC) (this is a type of vocal encoding or compression of an actual human voice recording).

 

As far as I know, there isn’t any special filter to “massage” the tones, unless you are referring to formant synthesis, which uses a set of filters to simulate the resonance of the human vocal tract.  However, these do not “massage” a tone, but actually are the devices that simulate human speech.

 

The “robot voice” used in home-brews is purely allophones, which are synthesize particles of speech which can be put together into words and sentences.  The tones are limited to however the allophones were synthesized.

 

What you typically hear in the old Intellivoice games and in newer home-brews with voice, are voice samples encoded using LPC.

 

The “Mattel Electronics Presents …” and the other simple phrases built into the Intelivoice ROM, such as numbers and cardinal directions, are done with Formant Synthesis, I think.

 

    dZ.

[8bitwidgets.com]

3 hours ago, DZ-Jay said:

What do mean, “to help massage the tones”?  

reading the wiki i saw that it employs a serious of digital filters to shape the tone.. 

 

3 hours ago, DZ-Jay said:

which uses a set of filters to simulate the resonance of the human vocal tract.

yea that's probably it.  i figured the filters are applied to raw sounds in certain combinations to create more variety, but maybe the filters basically are hard wired to specific tones.  

 

 

 

 

[+Lathe26]

12 hours ago, DZ-Jay said:

What do mean, “to help massage the tones”?  The Intellivision supports three modes of speech synthesis:  Allophones (this is the typical “robot voice), formant (this is completely synthetic human sounding voice, produced by simulating the vocal tract; I believe the built in RES ROM voices, such as numbers use this), and “linear Predictive Coding” (LPC) (this is a type of vocal encoding or compression of an actual human voice recording).

 

The better way to think of it is that the SP0256 only handles audio using LPC as a compression algorithm that is heavily optimized for sounds generated by the human vocal tract.  It's audio compression just like how MP3 is a type of audio compression, except that MP3 are much fatter so that they can handle music and other higher quality audio.  The data in the RES ROM uses the same format as the data fed into the SPB640 (Intellivoice) and the same format stored in external ROM chips (The Voice).  The allophones are nothing more than tiny audio samples of word fragments that are heavily compressed (making them sound robotic).  This is why the same allophones that are stored in the RES ROM of a SP0256-AL2 can also be fed into the Intellivoice via the SPB640.  Just like MP3's, the LPC algorithm used by the SP0256 has multiple compression levels, trading size for with audio quality.

 

I hope this helps more than it confuses.

 

[+DZ-Jay]

8 hours ago, Lathe26 said:

The better way to think of it is that the SP0256 only handles audio using LPC as a compression algorithm that is heavily optimized for sounds generated by the human vocal tract.  It's audio compression just like how MP3 is a type of audio compression, except that MP3 are much fatter so that they can handle music and other higher quality audio.  The data in the RES ROM uses the same format as the data fed into the SPB640 (Intellivoice) and the same format stored in external ROM chips (The Voice).  The allophones are nothing more than tiny audio samples of word fragments that are heavily compressed (making them sound robotic).  This is why the same allophones that are stored in the RES ROM of a SP0256-AL2 can also be fed into the Intellivoice via the SPB640.  Just like MP3's, the LPC algorithm used by the SP0256 has multiple compression levels, trading size for with audio quality.

 

I hope this helps more than it confuses.

 

 

Thanks for that.  You are of course, correct, although I do not know if it is any better.  May as well just say that under the hood it is all numbers.

 

The point I was trying to make is that there are different ways in which you could use the underlying mechanism of the Intellivoice to produce speech:

• You could use pre-created allophones (which, as you say, are samples of small particles of speech) and string them together into phonemes and words.  The draw back is that you can only use the samples as they are, and so it comes out like a robot without any inflections.
• You could use formant synthesis, which is similar to how the old SAM program works, by algorithmically producing the speech data, simulating how it resonates throughout the human vocal tract, rather than using static samples.  This can lead to more natural sounding yet synthetic speech, because it allows you to alter pitch and other parameters which give colour and inflection to the voice.
• You could take a pre-recorded human voice and apply the LPC compression to it.  The difference between this and the previous one is that you do not control the parameters in the sample because the recording is static, so all inflections need to be captured in the recording already.  However, that is easy for the human speaker to do -- it is just the normal cadence and tone of speaking, although you would need different samples for each different inflection, character voice, intonation, etc.

 

It is important to understand that even though they all turn into raw LPC data that is fed to the speech synthesis chip, the techniques employed to get that data are very different.  They require distinct algorithms and data processing.  Because of that, they are not "mix and match" -- at least as they stand.

 

I guess theoretically, you could take the static allophones and create some algorithm that alters their parameters dynamically to produce more natural speech -- but then, if you can do that, why start with the allophones?  Why not just go straight to sampling a human voice?

 

    dZ.

 

 

P.S. The reason I think the above distinctions are important (rather than just say "it's all LPC") is because that's where the art and science comes into it.  Because the most natural speech comes from encoding real human voices, that's the one everyone tries most to achieve -- and it is not trivial since it requires some very specific confluence of skills and techniques.  So, the difficulty is not in feeding LPC data to the chip, but in transcoding a PCM digital voice sample (which is what the industry has settled on as the way to encode digital audio in the past few decades) into LPC and into the data format needed by the chip.

 

[Crash7]

I'm waiting for somebody to do to the Intellivoice what Paulie did to his robot in Rocky IV.