is the synthasizer market dying?

[Kerry Hoath]

To answer both of your questions in a fashion.
Yes hardware speech is no longer as popular as it once was; with
the advent of software speech and fast processers people have seen less of
a need for another box on their desk to provide speech.
Couple with this the availability of multi-channel soundcards and you can hear
an mp3 and use software speechat t he same time.
this is both good and bad. On the good side we have one less piece
of hardware to look after but on the bad side there are projects like
speakup and emacspeak, and although emacspeak supports
IBM viavoice it is no longer beeing supported under Linux as
far as I know. There are attempts to get eflite working with emacspeak
haven't tried the results myself.

Regarding a program to convert the dos/bios input/output into serial stuff; you could
write one; assembler would be the best language to do it in.
As to communicating with the serial ports; the bios only uses
the polled interface and you'd either want t o find or write some direct
access routines or load a fossil driver.

Regards, Kerry.
On Sat, Sep 07, 2002 at 10:45:44PM +0000, Tyler Spivey wrote:
> well, see subject, anyways,
> is the synth market dying? i compiled 
> a
> few facts from what i could gather:
> the dectalk line of synths used to be made by dec,
> then they transfered to force computers.
> that company transfered dectalk to fonix,
> and it seems that the hardware line of synths from dectalk has died,
> because i can't find anything on hardware dectalks on there website.
> dectalks are a good synth, my decpc's worked under dos for years, but
> when it comes to linux it just won't do. i believe the double-talk
> line is still being developped, i just need to find the time to save up,
> but is the double-talk the only synth (for now) that is really being
> maintained/developped (new units being made)?
> my facts might be wrong, i'm not sure about most of this.
> i got most of my impressions off of googling around for a program i'm trying to find,
> or write somehow, that uses the dos bios and
> transforms dectalk pc responces into serial port output and
> input. 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup at braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> 
> 

-- 
Kerry Hoath:  kerry at gotss.net kerry at gotss.eu.org or  kerry at gotss.spice.net.au
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