Retro Tech Nibble: A Sweet Talking 1983 Micro Computer

● Description
Who didn't want a talking computer in the '80s? I know I did. It seemed so futuristic and enticing to imagine your machine chatting to you, what would it sound like, would it have a personality, would it be my friend? Today we face a bump back to reality.... it really wasn't that good!

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[RMCRetro]

A little update for you, a few comments suggest that my particular unit sounds a little worse than it should, so when I get a second I'll try three things to see if we can get any improvement. We'll try it on original hardware and not the modern Omni Spectrum, we'll check that capacitor in it and we'll check the speaker. Let's not kid ourselves, it's not going to suddenly turn into The Queen when it talks but if we can get a small improvement or at least knock the volume down then it could be a little better for our ears and nightmares. I'll knock a video up soon if I find anything interesting to share. Thanks as always for your suggestions. Neil - RMC

[RisingRevengeance]

I... wasn't expecting it to be quite that bad

[Mireaze]

Sounds like your dot matrix has finally gained sentience.

[MontieMongoose]

That voice is so soothing. I can tell why they called it the sweet talker.

[sohatyi]

Cheetah made some hardware synths, notoriously difficult to program and find. One was used for the Aphex Twin album.

[AKsevenFOUR]

The Ghostbusters audio is a sample rather than a voice synth. They are very different concepts. Even today, samples of human voice are clearly more accurate than synthesis.

[PG-gsvb]

The speech in Ghostbusters is not a speech synth but a sample, so no wonder it is easier to understand.

[tonelander]

I have watched this multiple times just to see your reaction and escape with coat at 2:52. It genuinely makes me crack up each time.

[youdontneedtoseehisidentif]

"Tell someone you love them today, because life is short.

But have the Cheetah Sweet Talker tell them, because life is also confusing and terrifying."

[Breakfast_of_Champions]

And meanwhile, the C64 had the comparatively excellent SAM speech synth without any extra hardware. It's stuff like this that formed the audience's perception of the Spectrum being best used as a doorstop, since the rubber keys wouldn't slide on the floor.

[michaelturner]

Sounds rather distorted actually. I'm sure the SP0256 should be clearer. Maybe the electrolytic caps in the amplifier section need replacing?

[catriona_drummond]

Making something like this and then calling it "sweet talker". Oh that beautiful British humour.

[gower]

I remember using the voice synthesizer on the Amiga, All you did as a teenager was make it say swear words

[marsan]

Make it say "exterminate" 🤣, nice find though, a truly unique blip in the evolution of technology.

[VladoT]

That LM386 audio amplifier chip is quite sensitive to changes in resistor values or capacitances over time resulting in distortion or self-oscillation so checking those resistor values around it and perhaps replacing capacitors may fix the bad sound... or maybe it sounds bad by design 😀

[SwitchAndLever]

I think it's interesting that they used the General Instruments chip which produced a reasonably low quality result when chips like the TMC0280 were available already in 1978, and used in devices such as the Speak and Spell, which had a much higher quality synthesized speech.

[jabelsjabels]

Oooh I've been waiting for this ever since I saw the Aphex Twin album in the background of one of your other videos!

[PurdueJHanna]

Ghostbusters, at least on the C64, used a sample of someone saying, 'Ghostbusters', not speech synthesis.

[MARC]

Well that was disturbing! 😂😂
We really did think that was amazing back in the day. I remember using the Amiga "Say" and SPEAK: to play back homework essays for school to listen for errors in my writing.

[p]

Interesting video. The Currah speech unit sounded much better, and was much easier to use via strings. Maybe that could be a follow-up video as quite a few games used that.