[DECtalk] A history question

[Jayson Smith]

Hi,

Okay, this is getting way out there, but when did DECtalk get the eighth and 
ninth voices? I remember hearing a sample of DECtalk in I think it was 
Dialogue Magazine on flexible disk. My parents had a copy. I heard the piece 
in 1989, not sure when it was actually done though. At that point, DECtalk 
only had seven voices, from how I understand it. Dennis and Wendy weren't 
present.
Then in November of 1989 we got our Kurzweil Personal Reader with DECtalk in 
it. All nine voices were there, in pretty much the same form they kept until 
Digital became Compaq and Force got hold of DECtalk. I think the version on 
the Kurzweil was something older than 4.0. While the voices sounded a lot 
alike, there were some pronunciation differences.

We got our first DECtalk PC running version 4.0 in mid 1993, and our first 
DECtalk Express in mid 1995.

Over all, I'd have to say my favorite DECtalk version is 4.2CD, the version 
that's running on all our DECtalk Expresses. 4.3 is excellent too, and it's 
all over the place in the DECtalk Archive, thanks to the speak43 program 
making the rounds. From what I heard of 4.4 in the demo sent to this list 
yesterday, it sounds pretty good. I'm not exactly sure what version of 
DECtalk Access32 uses, but by then there were a few changes. We got our copy 
of Access32 in mid 1998. In particular, the B sound, as in the words bin, 
bye, and bag, almost had an extra sound like it was trying to put an r in 
there. Not quite sure how to describe it.

I think my least favorite version is 4.61. Don't know if I ever heard 4.63. 
I think 4.64 sounds kind of weird, a bit sluggish or something. From what I 
heard of it, I think DECtalk 5 sounded better than 4.64, though not as good 
as the Digital versions.

On a somewhat related note, a few years ago I purchased a DTC01 on eBay. 
It's running DECtalk 2.0 from July 1984, and you can tell it. Not sure how 
many voices it has. It's pretty much just been sitting around collecting 
dust, unfortunately. I thought I might use some of its telephone 
functionality, but the DTC01 had some limitations I didn't know about until 
I already had it, E.G. can't detect touchtones while speaking, can't 
automatically detect hangups, etc. So that never happened.
Jayson