speech synthesis
Articles about speech synthesis:
This is a proof of concept video for Cantarino, a software speech synthesiser for Arduino.
It is still a work in progress, but a tech demo that runs on Arduino is now available.
This video is an amazing historical demo, from 1939, of the VODER – considered by some to be the first attempt to synthesise human speech by breaking it down into its component sounds and then reproducing the sound patterns electronically.
Per Wendy Carlos:
Homer Dudley….invented the VODER (Voice Operating DEmonstratoR), an electronic speaking instrument, which was unveiled (and demonstrated hourly) at the New York World’s Fair 1939-40.
Inside the tall rack of sturdy electronic gear was a pitch controlled reedy oscillator, a white-noise source, and ten bandpass resonant filters. For a Voder to “speak” a talented, diligently trained operator “performed” at a special console connected to the rack, using touch-sensitive keys and a foot-pedal. These controlled the electronic generating components. The results, while far from perfect (it was damn difficult to operate!), were still entertaining and instructive of the principles involved.
Devantech SP03 Text-to-Speech Synthesizer
Description:
This is a demo of the Devantech SP03 Speech Synthesizer. The Sp03 is a small Text-to-Speech synthesizer.
The text is:”How are you? I am fine! My name is SP03. I was build by Devantech. You can send me a englisch text and my integrated speech synthesizer willl produce a voice. Can you understand me? I am very sorry, but I can speak only english.”
More details here.
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Filed under: Music Videos, Software Synthesizers & Samplers
YouTuber Mark Luton made this fun video to demo a free speech synthesizer, which you can try out here.
Here’s his background on the speech synthesizer:
Speech synthesis is the artificial production of human speech. A computer system used for this purpose is called a speech synthesizer, and can be implemented in software or hardware. A text-to-speech (TTS) system converts normal language text into speech; other systems render symbolic linguistic representations like phonetic transcriptions into speech.
Synthesized speech can be created by concatenating pieces of recorded speech that are stored in a database. Systems differ in the size of the stored speech units; a system that stores phones or diphones provides the largest output range, but may lack clarity. For specific usage domains, the storage of entire words or sentences allows for high-quality output. Alternatively, a synthesizer can incorporate a model of the vocal tract and other human voice characteristics to create a completely “synthetic” voice output.
The quality of a speech synthesizer is judged by its similarity to the human voice, and by its ability to be understood. An intelligible text-to-speech program allows people with visual impairments or reading disabilities to listen to written works on a home computer. Many computer operating systems have included speech synthesizers since the early 1980s.
Note that the free online speech synthesizer is an AT&T project and comes with a bunch of ridiculous restrictions - like not allowing the output to be used in videos like the one above.
A Commodore Amiga Sings Daisy Bell
Description:
A Commodore Amiga sings the song Daisy Bell, using the narrator device speech synthesis built into the system.
Unknown author, 1987/09/28
Available on Aminet: http://aminet.net/package/game/gag/AmigaSingsDais
