[DECtalk] DECtalk 4.2 Software for Windows

[Aksel Christoffersen]

Hi all,

 

This has, as far as I know, not been posted publicly on the list yet, or in
any other DECtalk related forum that I know of. I'm therefore posting it
here, n case anybody is interested. My apologies if this is already well
known information.

A few months ago, Jake Gross sent me an e-mail detailing that a DLL-version
of DECtalk 4.2 for the Intel architecture has now been found. This DLL is
able to function on modern Windows like the newer DECtalk DLL's, like 4.41
and later. However, it is not able to be used with speak.exe, so the most
efficient way to use it is probably with say.exe, which works just fine. I
personally haven't tested it with SAPI5 or NVDA yet.

I've included it in the DECtalk Archive, both in my custom DECtalk Speak
Windows installer, and as a standalone ZIP file. When installed through the
Speak Windows installer, the shortcut created on the Desktop will launch a
command prompt window in the DECtalk 4.2 directory, ready to be used with
say.exe.

The Speak Windows installer can be found here

https://dectalk.nu/Software%20and%20Manuals/Software/DECtalk/Speak%20Windows
/DECtalk%20Speak%20Windows.exe

and the standalone ZIP file can be found here

https://dectalk.nu/Software%20and%20Manuals/Software/DECtalk/Speak%20Windows
/Individual/Digital%20Equipment%20Corporation/dec42.zip

 

In terms of sound, I would say it sounds very similar to DECtalk 4.3, though
with a few small differences, such as DECtalk 4.2 not slowing down quite as
much when encountering an exclamation point. Some of the phonemes also sound
a little different when singing. It's not really similar to the various 4.2
editions for DECtalk hardware in my opinion.

I would say this is now the earliest version of DECtalk for Windows we have
with the classic DECtalk sound, since the 4.1 speak window sounds very
muffled to me.

 

Here is an audio sample of DECtalk 4.2 with my own demo text.

https://dectalk.nu/Speech%20Synthesis%20Demonstrations/DECtalk/Aksel%20Chris
toffersen/DECtalk%204.2.wav

And here is a file of DECtalk 4.2 reading Jayson's DECtalk demo, created by
Jake on his own site.

https://datajake.braillescreen.net/misc_audio/demo42.flac

 

Kind regards:

Aksel

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://bluegrasspals.com/pipermail/dectalk/attachments/20250604/214e4051/attachment.htm>