[DECtalk] A history question

[Brandon Misch]

if you want to hear a reading edge machine, you can find a podcast of that over at blindcooltech.com i bring this up because that had dectalk 4.0 

On Jan 30, 2011, at 5:22 PM, Blake Roberts wrote:

> I think the record Ed refers to is a collection of speech synthesis
> demonstrations that Dennis put together. He provided brief narration before
> each demoSomeone converted that record to an old sound format (.au). I think
> it's on dectalk.com somewhere. I took the .au version, converted to mp3,
> changed the file name and listed Dennis Klatt as the artist. If anyone would
> like to hear the mp3 version of Dennis's record, write me off-list.
> 
> Like Brandon, I would love to hear any other recordings of Dennis that
> exist, or recordings of older Dectalks.
> Blake 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: dectalk-bounces at bluegrasspals.com
> [mailto:dectalk-bounces at bluegrasspals.com] On Behalf Of Brandon Misch
> Sent: Sunday, January 30, 2011 1:56 PM
> To: DECtalk Discussions
> 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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