Xref: utzoo sci.electronics:2806 comp.lsi:426 Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bbn!rochester!udel!gatech!mcnc!ece-csc!ncrcae!wte From: wte@ncrcae.Columbia.NCR.COM (Bill Eason) Newsgroups: sci.electronics,comp.lsi Subject: Re: Question about speech Synthesisor Message-ID: <3265@ncrcae.Columbia.NCR.COM> Date: 15 Apr 88 18:57:28 GMT References: <732@sun.soe.clarkson.edu> <3862@cbterra.ATT.COM> Reply-To: wte@ncrcae.UUCP (Bill Eason) Distribution: na Organization: NCR Corp., Engineering & Manufacturing - Columbia, SC Lines: 56 In article <3862@cbterra.ATT.COM> knt@cbterra.UUCP (Kirk Trost) writes: > >Brad Clements had asked some questions about the Radio Shack speech >synthesizer and text-to-speech converter. > >First of all, the speech synthesizer does not require that a 3.12 Mhz >crystal be used -- as long as the crystal is pretty close to that value, >the synthesizer should work the same, only that the pitch of the >resulting voice will be different... Sometime last fall I bought just the speech chip (sans text converter) and started building a simple circuit to play with it until I get a PC to control it. I was a little disappointed with the application notes supplied by RS with the chip. They hinted that the chip had a good bit more capability than they told how to use. If anyone has more app-note information or knows where to get it, please post or Email and I will summarize. More specifically: (Bear with memory lapses; it's been a few months since I've looked at the thing...) 1) Is there any way to control the pitch of the voice other than modifying crystal frequency? I remember the specs talking about the chip being able to emulate a vocal tract, but would that imply the ability to modulate pitch, too? 2) What is the eighth data (or did they call that address) bit for? If memory serves me correctly, there were only 64 or 128 phonemes(?) allophones(?) available in the specs, which leaves a line or two of additional data which could be fed to the chip. Anyone know what these are for and how to use them? 3) The specs gave a rough diagram of connection to external ROM, but didn't say much more than "It can be done." That may be enough to impress some people, but my inquiring mind wants to know HOW!! What kind of data format goes into these ROMs? Pulse-width data? At what sampling rate? What kind of block marker/header/size-limit is there to delineate one phoneme or phrase from the next? It is at this level that I get frustrated with the computer-store-with- a-few-discrete-parts-in-the-back shop that RS is (or has become). >... I have looked over the specifications on using the >converter in Radio Shack's Semiconductor Reference Manual, but don't >have the application to use it at this time. Maybe I should check here, but I somehow doubt that it would give me a whole lot more than the specs/"app notes" that came with the chip. Ted G. Kakatos posted a followup saying that a book, _Chip_Talk_, goes into more detail. Any more info on what it tells, where to find it? "Anything you can do to help would be . . . helpful" -Holy Grail TIA, Bill -- Bill Eason (803) 791-6917 ...!ucbvax!sdcsvax!ncr-sd!ncrcae!util5!wte NCR Corporation ...!rutgers!mcnc!ece-csc!ncrcae!util5!wte E & M Columbia 3325 Platt Springs Rd. West Columbia, SC 29169