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hardware speech synthesyzer comparison thread

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First post, by autoexecdotbat

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inspired by veli totaka's comparison/review of various software synthesisers, I decided to start a thread where can record output from different hardware based speech synthesyzers.
Due to budget constraints, lack of availability and the fact most connect to ports that would require me to use a new computer just for the comparison, I cannot record any of it myself, and thus I need your help. if anyone has any recordings of old hardware synthesyzers they would like to see posted here, they may post it here.
some examples of hardware synthesyzers are:
accent pc/sa/mesenger
artic transport/synfonix/215
dectalk pc/express/portable/original/USB
doubletalk/litetalk/trippletalk
votalker
echo2/cricket
ps2 speech adaptor
PES (pasific education systems) speech adaptor
coura microspeech
mockingboard speech
audaptor
speakout/sounding board/voice card
keynote gold sa/vc/pc
cheta speech synthesyzer (was released for bbc micro)
bbc speech synthesyzer (both US and UK versions)
ti 99/4a speech synthesyzer module
MBX speech module
magnavox the voice (oddicie 2)

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Reply 2 of 4, by webjoe

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The internet has called, and I found this thread. I'm just getting into retro hardware, and my area of interest are these hardware speech synthesizers!

Just some context, many of these speech synthesizers in the early to mid 80's are based on the specific speech chips that were available at the time. For example, most of us probably remember the TI Speak N' Spell (from the movie E.T.); that one particularly was the Texas Instrument TMS5100, but there are many types of chips and some of them implement speech synthesis in different "methods." Here's a short list (not comprehensive) that gives a lot of clue of what "family" these devices belong to:

* Votrax SC-01, SC-01A, SC-02 (rebadged as SSI 263P) = Votalker, Artic, Mockingboard,
* Texas Instrument TSM5100/5200 and later TSP50C0"x" = TI 99/4A, IBM PS/2 Speech Adapter
* General Instruments SP0256-AL2 (and variants) = Cheetah Sweet Talker, Magnavox the Voice (SP0256-19)

Most of these hardware devices typically use one of these following chips, so a lot of their "sound characteristics" inherited from the chip. Now, you can of course tweak a lot of the settings to change the pitch or tempo, so they can still have very unique "sounding traits" as far as I know. When I have more time, I'll add to this list!

Reply 3 of 4, by Jo22

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Hello everyone!
I'd like to let you know that there are Speech Synth emulation projects going on.
They emulate the behaviour/sound of old synthesizers and can take serial data, even.
Would be interesting to play with, I guess. Who doesn't love to have a talking CP/M or DOS command line ? 😉

Samples:
https://create.arduino.cc/projecthub/next-tec … -arduino-00e7d1
https://rimstar.org/science_electronics_proje … kie_library.htm

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