| ★ APPLICATIONS ★ CREATION MUSICAL ★ SUPERIOR SOFTWARE - SPEECH! ★ |
SPEECH! (Amstrad Action) | SUPERIOR SOFTWARE - SPEECH! (Popular Computing Weekly | Der Schneider lernt sprechen! (CPC Magazin) |
Speech conversion speaks for itself Superior Software's Speech was originally designed for the BBC, and has now made a successful transition to the Commodore 64 and the Amstrad CPC 464/664/6128, on cassette and disk. Speech is in fact a fairly standard voice synthesis program, running from software rather than from the more familiar cartridge format pioneered by the Currah Microspeech, Cheetah Sweet Talker, and so on. The 9K program is loaded first, then there are three demo files to study; one which goes through the capabilities of the program, one a simple spelling-test program, and the last which enables Ascii text files to be converted to speech. The quality of the speech itself, produced by modulating the output of the sound chip using frequency patterns based on the 49 common English phonemes, is no better or worse than any other comparable product. In other words, it sounds like a Dalek gargling with marbles. However, this is part of the charm of such products: what's the point of having a speaking computer which sounds like Kenneth Kendall -it's much more fun if it sounds like a computer. Speech uses three main commands; 'Say, which makes the machine speak anything typed in to it; *Speak. which allows you to input individual phonemes for more exact pronounciation; and 'Pitch,which changes the clocking rate, and thus both thespeed and pitch, of the speech. The Amstrad version also has left/ right/centre stereo settings. The test of a good speech synthesiser is its ability to handle ambivalent words like "through'', "tough", and "rough”. Speech handles it fairly well; "through" comes out more like "throw", but this is where the *Speak command with its individual phoneme pronounciation and pitch comes into its own. This also enables you to make the computer "sing" although using the 'Say command with separate words is much too slow. Speech can be used with your own Basic programs, though as far as I can make out it's not possible to create freestanding speech files. Nonetheless. for all kinds of serious applications, and also for a good laugh, Speech is an excellent and reasonably-priced package which should provide hours of education and entertainment.
Chris Jenkins, Popular Computing Weekly |
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