[DECtalk] legality of decTalk?

Josh Kennedy joshknnd1982 at gmail.com
Sat Jul 13 15:19:59 EDT 2019


I’m not sure, but I think that yes decTalk was probably used in the modern language masters. Before that, they used keynote gold in the franklin language masters, the old ones with word train and other games with sound effects in them.



Sent from Mail for Windows 10

From: Damien Garwood
Sent: Saturday, July 13, 2019 15:11
To: dectalk at bluegrasspals.com
Subject: Re: [DECtalk] legality of decTalk?

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
> 
> 
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