[DECtalk] DECtalk DTC03 Audio Samples

[Frankie Ventura]

Thanks, that was fun to listen to.

On Sep 6, 2025, at 12:53 AM, Aksel Christoffersen <aksel at dectalk.nu> wrote:

Hi,

I was recently contacted by @rommix0, who has a working DECtalk DTC03 module, which was released in 1985. He offered to record some audio samples of the speech, and I’ve now received two samples, which I’ve added to the DECtalk Archive.
I personally think this is a really interesting listen, since, from what I know, no audio of the DTC03 has existed on the internet before now.
I also think the voice quality apparent from these recordings is a really interesting study, since it actually doesn’t sound that different from the 90s hardware and software DECtalk we all know. The pronounciations of some words are a bit different, but overall the voices are more or less the same. This is especially interesting when comparing this to DECtalk 1.8 from 1983<https://dectalk.nu/Speech%20Synthesis%20Demonstrations/DECtalk/Aksel%20Christoffersen/DECtalk%201.8.wav> or DECtalk 2.0 from 1984<https://dectalk.nu/Speech%20Synthesis%20Demonstrations/DECtalk/Aksel%20Christoffersen/DECtalk%202.0.wav>, which both sound quite different than the DTC03. This really shows how much work went into improving the voices in just a year.

Here is the first sample, of the DTC03 talking about it’s firmware.<https://dectalk.nu/Speech%20Synthesis%20Demonstrations/DECtalk/Digital%20Equipment%20Corporation/dtc03%20firmware.wav>
And here is a sample of the DTC03 reading my own test text demonstrating the voices and the singing, which is also used to demonstrate all the other DECtalk versions in the archive.<https://dectalk.nu/Speech%20Synthesis%20Demonstrations/DECtalk/Aksel%20Christoffersen/DECtalk%203.0.wav>
Enjoy!

Kind regards:
Aksel
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