[DECtalk] A history question

Sun Jan 30 17:22:02 EST 2011

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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