The soundgen is very close to the speakjet, but is geared more towards general synth as well was speech. I’ve got a demo board around here, (somewhere). The synth design is modeled after a SID, I think, but of course does’t sound as good. Had thought about modding the speckjet project for a soundgen, but my project ‘to do’ list is already very long.
Yogi
Hi Yogi.
Funnily enough, I’ve just bought a Soundgin development board and chip set from a US website. I don’t have any real idea how I’m going to go about getting the chip under MIDIBox control, though…
I’m moving over to the LPCXPRESSO development board ( http://ucapps.de/mbhp_core_lpc17.html ), after TK suggested a simple circuit to control the SpeakJet, and tweaked Audiocommander’s KII MIOS app for me so it would run on the new hardware. It’s working pretty well so far, much to my surprise. My matrixboard wiring skills leave a lot to be desired, I can tell you…
Any tips on getting the Soundgin and LPCXPRESSO talking? Are the electrical and serial communications requirements of the Speakjet and Soundgin identical, do you think? Sorry for the newbie questions.
I little demo, SpeakJet controlled by Ableton Live, with some tweaking of the ‘Stress’ and ‘Speed’ parameters from a MIDI controller. I’ve added a touch of note randomisation, and I’m also transposing the MIDI notes up and down so that different allophones get triggered. It’s a little bit unstable- the same MIDI notes don’t always seem to trigger the same allophone, and there’s definitely something weird going on with the release envelope, but overall I’m quite pleased.
I’m starting to realise how time-consuming it would be to actually have it speak or sing intelligible words, though.
I’ve added a little reverb from NI Guitar Rig’s Reflektor, and a little pingpong delay. I’ve also applied a gate to the input to squash the background noise. It’s much less noisy now I’ve added the lowpass filter, but it’s definitely still not hi-fi!
Yeah, talking is.. difficult, I think. You have to string words together from individual phonemes. I haven’t tried it yet, but it should be possible, in theory. Maybe Audiocommander has tried it. You can also save words and phrases in the chips internal memory, but you have to do it with a Windows-only application, and then connect to the SpeakJet via a serial connection. I haven’t setup my board with a serial connection, so it can only be controlled via MIDI, through the USB port. I’m sure it would be possible to add serial control, but I wanted to keep everything as compact as possible, so I could put the board in a small enclosure.
Incidentally, I’ve just ordered a Soundgin chip and development board from US webshop (stupidly expensive delivery to the UK, but that’s another story). I’m hoping to bring that under MIDIbox control at some point in the future.
SoundGin dev. board arrived yesterday. Looking forward to giving it a go! Just hoping my newly-bought Belkin USB-Serial adapter plays nicely with Parallels/Windoze XP on my Mac laptop…
const char HelloMsg[] = "Circuit Cellar and Luminary Micro are pleased to offer design engineers an incredible
contest opportunity called Design Stellaris 2006 And with Circuit Cellar magazine they also have the 1 venue for peer
recognition of their winning applications";[/code]
Problems: the dictionary is very limited and only prepared for exactly these words.
I wasn't able to create a new dictionary with the tool that is introduced in the [Circuit Cellar article](http://www.circuitcellar.com/archives/viewable/Birsan207/index.html).
The generated C files contain arrays with different type names, and even if they are adapted the new words still won't be output.
Looks like an inconsistent release... :-/
Some phonemes (like h) result into a heavy crackling sound (as you can hear in the demo)
However, the formant synth part seems to be interesting.
If somebody wants to enhance it: step forward! :)
Best Regards, Thorsten.
