Speakalator Web

Speakalator Web is a utility that helps you create phrase data for the AtariVox speech synthesizer. Speakalator Web is based on the original Speakalator app, which itself was a port of Magnevation's Phrase-a-lator app. If you're familiar with any of those apps, you can likely jump into creating phrases without missing a beat.

Speakalator Web uses the AtariVox SpeakJet chip for all sound output. Without one connected to your computer (with headphones or speakers plugged into it) you will won't hear any sound.

Browser Requirements

To use this app, your browser must support the Web Serial API, which allows communication with serial devices (like microcontrollers) directly from the browser. This feature is currently supported in Chromium-based browsers: Google Chrome (version 89+), Microsoft Edge (version 89+), and Opera (version 75+).

At present time Firefox and Safari aren't supported.

Getting Physically Connected

Speakalator talks to the SpeakJet chip inside your AtariVox via a TTL serial port. TTL serial ports are commonly USB devices, and are an easy way for modern PCs to talk to devices like microcontrollers and sensors. Unlike old PC serial ports (which use weird voltages and have big connectors), TTL serial ports commonly use pin headers and operate with 3.3V or 5V signals.

If you need to buy a new TTL serial port to connect to your AtariVox, try to get one with a CTS pin. This will allow you to use hardware flow control, which means the AtariVox will pause the serial connection once its buffer becomes full.

A nice and easy way to connect wires to your AtariVox is to use a "Serial Port D-SUB DB9 9 Pin Male IDC Crimp Connectors for Flat Ribbon Cable". Basically you just squeeze a 9 wire ribbon cable in the port, and small blades remove the wire coating and make the connections.

From there you need to figure out how to make the following connections between TTL serial port and the DB9 port wires. (soldering, splicing Dupont connectors, ...)

 TTL TX  ---- DB9 pin 1
 TTL CTS ---- DB9 pin 2 (optional, but needed for hardware flow control)
 TTL +5V ---- DB9 pin 7
 TTL GND ---- DB9 pin 8
            

Connecting The App To The Serial Port

Before hitting "Connect Serial" in the app, you should choose from one of the three different kinds of serial flow control:

1. None - Use this if your TTL serial device lacks CTS, or CTS isn't connected to the DB9 pin 2.
2. Hardware - Use this if your TTL serial device has CTS connected to the DB9 pin 2.
3. Software - This is a simulated software flow control. Pick this if you don't have hardware flow control, but are running into issues with longer phrases overrunning the AtariVox buffer. The software flow control isn't strictly flow control. Instead this mode delays sending bytes to the AtariVox buffer, if a long lived command was previously sent (specifically, phoneme/sound bytes 128-254).

Once you've selected the flow control, go ahead and click on the "Connect Serial" button. A pop-up window will allow you to pick a serial port on your system that corresponds to the TTL Serial device.

If things go well, the "Status" text area at the bottom-right part of the window should indicate the serial port was connected.

If you run into problems connecting and you're on a Linux system, you likely need to grant your user permissions to the serial port prior to hitting "Connect Serial". (try adding your user to the "dialout" group with sudo usermod -aG dialout $USERand then log out of the desktop and back in again. If that fails, a temporary fix is to open the permmissions to the USB device with something like sudo chmod 777 /dev/ttyUSB?)

There's also a "Test" button you can press, which will send "Hello World" speech codes to the serial port.

Using The App

Speakalator assumes you have some minimal understanding of how SpeakJet phoneme codes and control codes work. If you don't, get a hold of the SpeakJet manual and do your homework.

You'll see that most of the window is comprised of buttons that are named the same as the SpeakJet codes. Single-clicking any one of these buttons will send the code to the SpeakJet in the AtariVox immediately. Double-clicking any of these buttons will add the SpeakJet code to the "Say Data" text area (at the current cursor position).

The Say Data text area is where you can build up long sequences of codes, to make the AtariVox say an entire phrase. To listen to the speech data in the Say Data area, just click on the "Speak" button.

Here are some additional pointers to make adding speech data more convenient:

• You can also copy and paste codes, or type them in manually.
• Feel free to hit [ENTER] to break your speech into separate parts. Whitespace and non-display characters are ignored.
• You can add comments in the Say Data text using the # character. Anything after it will be ignored, for the rest of the line.
• If you have a common word you want to add, you can type it into the "Dictionary Lookup" area and search. If it's found, the codes to say it will be added to the Say Data text (at the current cursor position).
• It's a good idea to begin your data with the \RESET code, to ensure previously set pitch/speed/etc. isn't carried into your phrase. (Use the "Add Reset" button or type it).

When you're done authoring the phrase and you wish to use it in your game, you can use either "View Data" button to display the speech codes as decimal or hexadecimal format. Don't forget to add the 255/$FF end-of-speech marker to the end of your ROM data. (Speakalator doesn't add this automatically, in case you're working on phrase fragments.)

Last Word

Using Speakalator in a basic way will produce voice output on par with basic text to speech systems, like SAM or Speak'N'Spell. Here are a few reasons why basic phoneme codes sound flat, and what you can do about it:

• Odd Phoneme Selections. Sometimes one of the phoneme selections may be lacking. e.g. "Atari" may be pronounced like "Ah-tari" instead of the more common "Uh-tari". You can single-click different related sounds in the interface to find the right one, or you can dictionary lookup a word that has the same sound you want.
• Bad Phoneme Pacing. Sometimes the phoneme choices are appropriate, but the length of each phoneme in the word doesn't sound natural. To fix this, try adding the \SLOW and \FAST modifiers before the phoneme code you want to change the length of, or use SPEED changes to affect more than one phoneme code.
• Lack of Pitch Changes. When people say words, the pitch of the words rise and fall as the sentence progresses. Questions end on a higher pitch, statements end on a lower pitch, etc. To accomplish the same in your voice data, you can use the PITCH modifier with a pitch value.