TI-99/4A Speech Tutorial

How to reproduce your own speech using the TI-99/4A, (or Win994A Emulator), QBOXPro software and a TI synth!

The is a re-upload of the video I recently posted. For some reason, the picture quality of the first video was terrible. This time I converted it to WMV before uploading... Much better (and quicker to upload too...)

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• TI-99/4A
• ti99
• texas
• instruments
• retro
• speech
• computer
• how
• to
• howto
• tutorial

[blowtorchabortion]

This is amazing. Thanks for providing us with this tutorial!

The creative possibilities are endless :)

Have you tried synthesizing any non-vocal sources?

[MarkWillsUK]

Hi. Thanks for your comments. No, I haven't tried that yet, though I will next time I play with it. I'm not expecting great results. The TMS5220 chip is designed to simulate the physics of the human vocal tract, thus it is only any good at reproducing the sounds a human can reproduce. For example, if you recorded the sounds of drums being played, it probably couldn't reproduce it. If you recorded the sound of a HUMAN making drum sounds with his mouth, you might stand a chance!

Mark

[Opry99er]

You S.O.B. =) That's incredible. One day, you and I will have to talk on the phone and you're gonna have to walk me through this... There are several programs I've written in XB that I would love to implement speech into. And not just the CALL SAY words in the back of the XB book. Bloody brilliant!

[MarkWillsUK]

He he! Thanks! Yeah we'll do a skype session or something one of the days!

[gunshooter72]

DAMN! MAN, that voice is like crystal clear! It makes a handful of modern games' voices look like shit!- great!

[MarkWillsUK]

He he!! YEah, it's pretty bloody impressive stuff eh? All those years ago, those machines were capable of much more than we thought! :-)

[kiyotewolf]

I get the error "No coding table in project" and I can't get it to do anything useful.

[TheMindOfPat]

@TheMindOfPat Oh, it was a dumb question, I found it off the wikipedia page of all things. But I still would love to see a technical description of the "coefficients" or whatever the datasheet calls them... or source code for QBox. ;-P

[TheMindOfPat]

Probably a dumb question, but where did you find qboxpro? I can't find anything (as a guest) on 99er either, maybe they block everything unless you sign up?

[CarbonicHolyPally]

I so far do not see any reason why I could not import that file into GPL and run it from GPL instead of Assembly as most of the Speech utilities are all GPL Cartridges.

[AtariAndre42]

@MarkWillsUK Did you ever hear the TMS5220 perform on an Atari Star Wars arcade game ?

It is SO damn amazing what the Atari engineers produced there ! Not only do Darth Vader, Luke and C3PO SOUND like them, but even R2D2 is rendered very faithful and also the "screeching" sounds of the Tie fighters flying past.

This method is very interesting ! Can't get Qboxpro to work though...need INI file(s) ? In theory this can be used to add or change sounds on f.i. Star Wars :)

[123stephenno]

steven hawking?

[Limehunter7]

@furryfeatherycat This. I'm having the same problem, and no compatibility settings are working. Do I need another emulator, for Windows now?

[furryfeatherycat]

I have 64-bit Windows 7 on my computer, so I can't use QBOX. Is there any other software that can convert the .wav file?

[mrbrandon71]

I loved TI stuff back in the day! Had the wrist watches, so kewl, speak and spell, and the computer!  Great stuff, even today have the calcs! TY FOR POSTING!

[kiyotewolf]

If you sample a female voice, will it LPC-code a female sounding voice?

I have a pet project called "KikiAI", which uses bits of speech that are strung together. It's still a rough project, and I'm constantly refining it.

~Kiyote!