[DECtalk] legality of decTalk?
Damien Garwood
damien at daygar.plus.com
Sat Jul 13 15:11:26 EDT 2019
Hi Josh,
If there are any derivatives going on at all, I think Keynote is more
likely to be a derivative of Eloquence than of DECTalk.
I'm not sure what the chronology of Klatt-based synths are, but while
Eloquence certainly bases its synthesis off the Klatt model, I think we
can safely say that its vocal qualities have slightly different nuances
and influences than those of DECTalk.
Having said that, the manufacturer of a speech synth will likely end up
making something that easily reminds us of something else without it
being intentionally derived. A classic example of this is ESpeak, which
reminds me of a slightly distorted and more nasal version of the Dolphin
Apollo II synth.
I can't help wondering though, wasn't DECTalk the synth used for the
modern Franklin Language Masters? Sounded almost like Betty.
Cheers,
Damien.
On 13/07/2019 07:57 pm, Josh Kennedy wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Just curious, since there are legal and illegal versions of eloquence
> out there i.e. CodeFactory sells sapi5 and other eloquence for use with
> NVDA and sapi5… well is it the same with decTalk? Is decTalk owned by a
> company and does that company still charge money for it? Or are some
> software versions of decTalk charged for, and others, abandonware? Is
> that why there is a lot of decTalk stuff floating around, because the
> newest stuff is owned by a company while the older decTalk stuff like
> 4.6 and below are abandonware and nobody cares what you do with them
> anymore? I remember at one time, decTalk was the most expensive
> synthesizer box you could get for your computer 30 or 35 years ago, and
> it was the most popular and people who had speaking disabilities used
> decTalk to sing and to use it as a very expressive voice if they wished.
> I bet keynote gold is just some sort of modified decTalk. I wonder if
> decTalk is the root of all the later klatt-based synthesizers,
> eloquence, truVoice, keynote gold, infovox230, etcetera? It seems like
> decTalk still has the most flexibility and can do the most stuff.
>
> Josh
>
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>
>
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