[DECtalk] A history question

Brandon Misch bmisch2002 at gmail.com
Sun Jan 30 19:53:28 EST 2011


thanks for this. does the dectalk usually do that message? or did you write the rest of it after the dectalk is running part? 

On Jan 30, 2011, at 5:11 PM, Jayson Smith wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> Here's a short recording of my DECtalk DTC01 using firmware 2.0 from July of 
> 1984.
> http://q-audio.net/d/18422
> Jayson
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Brandon Misch" <bmisch2002 at gmail.com>
> To: "DECtalk Discussions" <dectalk at bluegrasspals.com>
> Sent: Sunday, January 30, 2011 1:56 PM
> Subject: Re: [DECtalk] A history question
> 
> 
> can you send what you can? or is that recording all that you have and are 
> there any recordings of the old dectalks from the 80's besides that record?
> 
> On Jan 30, 2011, at 1:45 PM, ebruckert Bruckert wrote:
> 
>> He recorde alot before his voice went. By 1982 it was very different. And 
>> I don't have a lot of backups as the medu=iums changed.
>> 
>> On Sun, Jan 30, 2011 at 12:43 PM, Brandon Misch <bmisch2002 at gmail.com> 
>> wrote:
>> his voice didn't sound that bad from that record about speech systems from 
>> the 30's to the 80's unless that wasn't him.
>> 
>> On Jan 30, 2011, at 9:56 AM, ebruckert Bruckert wrote:
>> 
>>> All the DECtalk voices have been there since 1982. In fact the Dennis 
>>> voice was modeled by Dennis Klatt at the time to be his closest match to 
>>> his own voice as he could. When I first met him his natural voice was 
>>> already deteriorating due to his throat cancer.
>>> 
>>> The DTC 01 does try to hear touchstones while at speaking it tries to 
>>> cancel out the outgoing sound from the ingoing sound and in old systems 
>>> used to work pretty good. Whether changes in telephony have made that 
>>> more difficult I don't know.
>>> 
>>> On Sun, Jan 30, 2011 at 8:58 AM, Jayson Smith <ratguy at insightbb.com> 
>>> wrote:
>>> 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
>>> 
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>> DECtalk at bluegrasspals.com
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>>> 
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>> DECtalk at bluegrasspals.com
>>> http://jaybird.no-ip.info/mailman/listinfo/dectalk
>> 
>> 
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> 
> 
> 
> 
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