The Speaker

The Speaker is a software speech synthesizer for the Amstrad. It was published as a BASIC listing in French Magazine CPC Infos by Xavier Grossetete in 1991. This was based on a port of the Spectrum Speech program by Superior Software, published in 1986. The Speaker was then retyped by NoRecess in 2011 and distributed as a DSK file called -SAY.dsk.

The original code has been disassembled by CPSoft and has been converted into a ROM extension format. The Z80 assembly source code will also be available to download.

Usage

Add SpeakerROM.rom to a ROM bank on your Amstrad emulator.

Type |SPEAK to view the usage instructions.

|SAY,"HELLO WORLD" - Say a phrase. The program converts the string into phonemes.

|RAW,"/HEH4/HEH3/HEH2/HEH1/" - Say a phrase without the program converting phonemes.

|SPEED,1-20 - Alter the speed of the speech

|CENTRE - Output speech using channel B

|LEFT - Output speech using channel A

|RIGHT - Output speech using channel C

Still to do

• Functions to screen read text should be developed.
• Investigate if there is a way of outputting speech without disabling interrupts.

Download

• Speaker ROM - The Speaker Speech Synthesizer in ROM format
• Speaker ROM source code - Coming soon