How to Produce Voice

[Just Jeff]

Good Morning,

 

I'm interested in learning a little bit about producing voice. Can anyone please point me in the right direction? I suppose I need to learn how to convert a sound file to Atari readable data, and also need a voice engine? How much memory does say, 1 second of sample use? How many cycles would I have left over for a kernel if I wanted to show something on the screen during speech?

 

Thanks!

[BigO]

One discussion on the subject: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/184034-question-digitized-sound-on-atari-2600/?hl=%2Bquadrun&do=findComment&comment=2341279

Seems like that might give you a pretty good start toward understanding the subject. (I found that by searching this forum for "Quadrun" which is a game that produces human speech sounds natively on the 2600 hardware.)

 

There's a device called Atarivox if you're interested in an external device to produce speech.

[Just Jeff]

Thanks.. I have the sample player pretty much how I want it now but I still need a tool to convert files to 4 bit (high and low nibbles in one byte)

 

Anybody know of anything? The link points to a perl script which I'm trying to figure out, but I'm wondering if there is something better and easier.

[+SpiceWare]

I still need a tool to convert files to 4 bit (high and low nibbles in one byte)

 

 

 

This is what I used for Draconian

raw_to_dpc.zip

Samples need to first be converted to unsigned 8 bit raw format, which I used sox to create:

../sox $file -b 8 -u $root.raw
../raw_to_dpc $root.raw $root.pds

[Just Jeff]

Thanks! I think I got through it all except my computer doesn't recognize pds. Is that Power Director Script? Opening it with JEdit doesn't look like much.

shining.zip

[+SpiceWare]

I made that up, PDS = Packed Digital Samples

 

It's a binary file, not text, so use INCBIN to include it in your source:

incbin sample.pds

---

Hmm,need to put spacing in front of the incbin, the forum keeps removing it for some reason - probably because I'm on my iPad.

[Just Jeff]

OK Thanks. I'll work on it. I forgot to mention also.. the switch -u was not recognized so I used

-e unsigned-integer

[Just Jeff]

\sox-14-4-2>raw_to_dpc shining.raw incbin shining.pds

Hmm.. Doesn't like that.. Where does it go?

[+SpiceWare]

It's a C program. Provided it compiled correctly for you, it should run from the local directory just fine:

Darrells-Mac-Pro:samples darrellspice$ ./raw_to_dpc
Usage: raw_to_dpc.h <infile> <outfile>

[Just Jeff]

OK.. I was getting that. I thought that was it telling me I wasn't giving it what it expected.

 

Though I don't see any result from running it.

[+SpiceWare]

INCBIN goes in your 6507 source code.

 

sample_alert:
    INCBIN "./samples/alert.pds"
sample_alert_size = * - sample_alert 

---

[Just Jeff]

Thanks.. Still having a tough time with this. Its in my source, and it compiles. But there's still something wrong and it doesn't run. When it loads in JEdit, I get:

C:\Atari\dasm\Shining.bin:
The file could not be loaded correctly (some data might be lost) with
the encoding "Cp1252".
(java.nio.charset.UnmappableCharacterException: Input length = 1)
Try selecting a different encoding.
It can be selected with the menu File->Reload with Encoding.
If you want it to be done automatically, add the candidates into
"List of fallback encodings" in Encodings pane of Global Options.

and Stella's disassembly doesn't look so good.

 

Is the .pds supposed to be just 4 bit sample data or is there more to it?

 

[edit: I added the .asm]

Shining.asm

Edited January 20, 2018 by BNE Jeff

[Sheddy]

I guess jedit is expecting text. It's a binary file, ie raw data. Most editors don't crash due to that though, which is totally down to the editor. You need something like a hex editor if you want to poke around the raw data

[Just Jeff]

Apparently I tried doing a jsr to it at some point. If I remove that, it at least makes noise. If it is just 4 bit samples, I suspect my sample rate and length don't match..

Shining2.asm