🚀 go-pugleaf

kevinj@boulder.Colorado.EDU (Kevin M. Jackson) writes:
>I'm trying to decide on a chip to use for a voice synthesis project I'm 
>about to undertake.  Does anyone have a suggestion regarding some good
>quality voice synthesis chips?
>

This topic has been hashed many-a-time, but its always worth reviving, because
sometimes people have new ideas, or new chips have come out.

If you need unlimited vocabulary, you have two choices:

Go with one of the phoneme synthesizers like GI's SPO256 or Votrax.  I've
heard of people talk about an SC-01, but I'm not sure who makes it.  The main
advantages of this approach are: unlimited vocabulary, and low data rate. 
Disadvantages:  sppech is robotic sounding and sometimes hard to understand. 
(Oh yeah, SSI used to make one... the SSI-263, but now Artic technologies
sells the chip).

Or, you can record your own speech (digitizing) and have exactly the
vocabulary you need.  Advantages:  excellent reproduction quality. 
Disadvantages: high data rate.  OKI semiconductor makes several ADPCM
chips that both digitize and play back ADPCM data.  But, due to the high data
rate, you need a large amount of RAM.  See the June '83 Circuit Cellar in Byte
and the December '88 issue of QST for projects using OKI chips. 
Another possibility for digitizing is by making your own circuit to do this. 
I have a delta modulation circuit that uses a few op-amps and works well.

By the way, OKI has a demo of their MSM6258 by phone: 800-832-6654 ext. 462.

    Greg Bell_________________________________________________________
      Hardware hacker          |
      Electronics hobbyist     | UUCP:  uunet!serene!pnet12!gbell
      EE major at UC San Diego |