What's the advantage of a hardware synth?

[Janina Sajka]

OK, My 2 cents (American) below:

> From: "Jonathan Duddington" <jsd at clara.co.uk>
> To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." <speakup at braille.uwo.ca>
> Sent: Wednesday, November 08, 2006 7:41 PM
> Subject: What's the advantage of a hardware synth?
> 
> 
> > In article <Pine.LNX.4.64.0611081636470.1525 at darkstar.example.net>,
> >   randy turner <rturner222 at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> >
> >> do they still build any computers with the older isa slots?

I'm not aware of any.

> >> also has any company built any pci synths that will work in linux?
The TripleTalk PCI should, but doesn't, as far as I'm aware. This should
get fixed.

> >> what are the choices that are left for linux??
TripleTalk USB/Serial and DEC-Talk USB/Serial.

The serial ports work currently. The USB ports can be expected to work
eventually.

> >
> > I'm not visually impaired and I've not used a hardware synth myself,
> > but I'm curious.  What is the advantage of a hardware synth over a
> > software synth?
> >
> > I can think of a few possibilities, but I'm curious which are true and
> > are important for those who use or prefer hardware synths:
> >
> > 1.  It doesn't affect the computer's sound system, which can therefore
> > play other sounds unaffected by the TTS.  This could probably be
> > achieved for a software synth by using two sound cards.
Or by appropriate use of alsa dmix, now the default.

However, there are situations were you want to insure the TTS never
makes it into the audio mix, such as audio/music work.

> >
> > 2.  System startup messages can be spoken before the point when the
> > sound system and synth software is initialized and working.  This would
> > be overcome by the proposed "Spoken Boot" feature.
OK, I'm behind. I haven't seen the proposal. What concerns me is the
supposition that sufficient system resources are available for the
proposal to function. Speakup plus hw synth starts extremely early in
the boot process and, as such, is ideal for debugging early fatal
problems--even if I must launch via /bin/sh, which I've sometimes had to
do.

> >
> > 3.  Problems with installing and setting up a software synth.
> >
> > 4.  Prefer the sound of the hardware synth voice to those currently
> > available with software synths.
> >
> > 5.  Limitations of computer processor power or memory, although I doubt
> > this is an issue now.
> >
> > 6.  The hardware synth offers some feature not available in the
> > software synths.
System installation is one such, though the Ubuntu installer can
obviate this somewhat.

Janina

> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Speakup mailing list
> > Speakup at braille.uwo.ca
> > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> > 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup at braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup

-- 

Janina Sajka				Phone: +1.202.595.7777
Partner, Capital Accessibility LLC	http://CapitalAccessibility.Com

Marketing the Owasys 22C talking screenless cell phone in the U.S. and Canada--Go to http://ScreenlessPhone.Com to learn more.

Chair, Accessibility Workgroup		Free Standards Group (FSG)
janina at freestandards.org		http://a11y.org