[DECtalk] DECTalk 4.2 Alpha (fwd)

[Don]

On 8/16/2022 5:26 PM, Josh Kennedy wrote:
> it would be great for nostalgia. Sake to have a double talk emulator someday
> just something simple that you could paste text into and have it read it
> back and change the play around with the different speech parameters of it.

The DoubleTalk had a TTS built-in.  So, unlike the Votrax devices,
you could push *text* at it and expect to hear speech.  By contrast,
the Votrax devices were analagous to operating DECtalk in "phoneme
mode"; you pushed phonemes at the device and it "made sounds".

[I've not bothered to sort out the details of the TTS algorithm
embodied in the device as it's of a pretty low quality -- easy to
"confuse".]

Because there is information stored in the transitions between sounds,
this meant you had to think hard about the phoneme sequence and *how*
each was going to be articulated, stressed, etc.  Otherwise, it speaks
in a dreadful monotone.