[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
> 
> Sent from Mail <https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=550986> for 
> Windows 10
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Dectalk mailing list
> Dectalk at bluegrasspals.com
> http://bluegrasspals.com/mailman/listinfo/dectalk
> 


More information about the Dectalk mailing list