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Canada
Asked — Edited

Voice Synthesis

I want the really low sounding voice from the infamous(2 kids died getting highest scores)... arcade game Berzerk for my robot. I actually have all 30 words from the Mame emulator program but they are all the same tone and pitch normal mid range pitch.The original arcade game was able to vary the pitch up high and low randomly in the game which made the robots sound really evil. I was actually reading the comments from the guy who programmed the game at Stern electronics back in 1980(he chats with everyone on youtube today still) Not sure if he was joking but he said back in 1980 voice synthesis was really new and expensive,his game had 30 words and each word was a separate micro chip that cost $8000.00 each! Berzerk was the first talking arcade machine! Does anyone know if it is possible to change the voice pitch up or down in the windows EZ builder?I did figure out how to add different beeping sounds at different pitches but to do that with the voices would be cool,really love the low deep darth vader pitch from the game!Possibly is there a free voice reader text to speech emulator that could simulate this? The "david" I use now is not good for a robot voice from the windows 10 speech reader. *tired*


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Canada
#1  
Okay,very wild...I did actually find a really cool TTS speech reader app in the Google play store for my Android phone made by the Svox company, they have many voices to choose and the Dark Lord voice sounds about right for a great robot text to speech voice but it was not free but cheap to buy at least! so it won't work from windows 10 computer but it does work on the mobile ARC,even if I program the text on computer where it has the David voice,after I move the robot script to mobile app it starts using the Dark Lord voice,extremely Evil sounding,love it!*cool*
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Synthiam
#2  
I don't believe the chip was $8k. Specifically since Texas Instruments started the speech synthesis with the Speak'n'Spell in the 70's. Once Texas Instruments released their chip, there were dozens of clones and Japanese alternatives for low cost.

Does changing the pitch in Windows speech synthesis settings do anything for you? ARC has a speech synthesis settings control.
PRO
Canada
#3  
Yes ,DJ , actually I think I had the speak N Math as a kid,was a big novelty thing way back,I only have a few microsoft voices to choose in the windows 10 and only the David voice sounds semi-robotic like the Hal computer from 2001 space Odyssey movie. Only thing is ,he sounds like a retarded Hal .Not really sure if the settings can improve that voice. I do really like this DarkLord voice on my phone so I may just record the phone saying what I want and just convert them to MP3 files that ARC windows can relay to the robot...unless I can find a better Microsoft TTS voice somewhere online for P.C.:P
#4  
@Roborad,

have you tried Audacity at all for Ubuntu or Windows?
You can easily control pitch with it.
https://youtu.be/deheRuoVg3M
https://youtu.be/A0SzqTJUkq8

Not sure if it would suit but its something ive recently looked at so thought maybe it might help?

Type this into your Terminal-

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/audacity
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install audacity

User-inserted image
PRO
Canada
#5  
Audacity? Yes I have used it before for amplifying EVP voice phenomenon from some haunt investigations,great suggestion!:)
PRO
Canada
#6  
@robo rad

Check this instructables page out, it helped me with my Voltron robot voice;)

*Edit: @NEWAGETOMY whoops I didn't realize those youtube vids were tutorials, probably explaining the same thing as the instructables page, my bad
#7  
@Jeremie,

I actually bookmarked your link so all good.:P

Hows Voltron coming along? *cool*
#8  
@roborad

Quote:

Only thing is ,he sounds like a retarded Hal
Hahaha, it is extremely difficult to find a good voice for your robot isn't it...
I would LOVE to have a HAL 9000 voice for my robot too, it is simply the best at being emotionless and deep at the same time! But I guess although it seems to be fairly easy to produce, it might be as well impossible...it kind of works thru the context, and also the pauses and timing of this voice only character make this Ai one of the best I have ever see in cinematic context!:D
#11  
Another thing to check out is Speakonia, it provides an old 80's style text to speech with an option to create wave files and it is free. You can download the program from Cnet here:
http://download.cnet.com/Speakonia/3000-7239_4-10125328.html

The CFS Technologies homepage has up the license key needed to unlock the create a wav file feature. http://www.cfs-technologies.com/home/

I just used it to created some Short Circuit robot sound files because I think the American Voice #1 sounds spot on for the none "alive" Johnny five SAINT robot voices.
PRO
Canada
#12  
Ha ha thanks guys for all the Links but getting near a Darth vader type voice was more what i like for my robot (with a slight cylon echo effect)so I will try to stay away from most TTS voices ,I will be making my own custom voices using the Cylonix vocoder which has so many cool effects and can be used in real time if I want to just send my own voice through microphone and instantly have it come out the robot,it seems to work in win10 but is not finding my audio input yet,will try to figure out why as it will work from winxp all the way to win7 and even vista it can be still found at cylonix.com under the windows software.
https://cylonix.com/windows_vocoder.html

Edit----So I tried my old win7 laptop with the Cylonix program and I had CNN news playing on the internet with that Wolf Blitzer reporter in real time it was changing Wolf's voice talking just like a Cylon from that old 70's Galactica tv series! this is too much fun!:D
#13  
Good threat....I like a discussion about how different builders implement voice features to their robots! There is always a new idea coming up...or two!:D
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