Stephen Hawkings voice synthesizer - Amiga, 'Say'

[Guest2]

I wasnt sure where to post this

As a child I rememer using a program on my Amiga 500 called 'Say'
This program was build into a Workbench 1.3 disk.
I would have hours of fun using the Amiga to say random phrases in a robot like voice.

Anyway, it looks as if Stephen Hawking used the same program for his voice which I never know!

The following youtube video even shows the program with -m -p75 (male, pitch 75) at 35 seconds in...
However it also states he uses a seperate synthesizer 'made by speech plus'

I dug out my Amiga along with Workbench 1.3 and guess what, Mr Hawking is back!

Can anyone dispute this as I cannot for the life of me find online that Workbench 'Say' was used by him for his voice. I did however find an post on a forum where people said 'Say' was removed from later versions of Workbench because of 'A change in licensing' My guess is Stephen Hawking paid for the rights to it and removed it from future Workbench versions

 

[peterpies]

You might know already, but you might be better off asking over at the English Amiga Board.

I have know idea the answer but the voice has been used loads over the years, adverts etc. Why buy the rights, for profit or protect your image.

 

[TheVoice]

I seem to recall that the equipment he used was upgraded a little while before he died, but that it was specially designed to continue using the same voice as his older equipment rather than anything new and more natural-sounding.

 

[Guest2]

You might know already, but you might be better off asking over at the English Amiga Board.

I have know idea the answer but the voice has been used loads over the years, adverts etc. Why buy the rights, for profit or protect your image.

Thanks, will have a look there

 

[dirtychinchilla]

I seem to recall that the equipment he used was upgraded a little while before he died, but that it was specially designed to continue using the same voice as his older equipment rather than anything new and more natural-sounding.

I think he said that it was as much his voice as any other had been and therefore he had no desire to change his own voice

 

[Efour]

I used to get my Amiga to say...

"Wilf is a druggy cos he smokes ciggies."

Happy times

 

[Adam_151]

Early sound blaster cards (early 1990s) came with a dos program called sbtalker.exe on the driver disks that would read out a text file in exactly the same voice (Just one of the demostration things that used to come with things like sound cards to give you something to test them with) , I was amazed by this when I discovered it and worked out what it did a few years later

 

[Hades]

I had wondered the same over the years. I recall hearing Amiga's Say for the first time and thinking the future had arrived!

 

[Deleted member 66701]

It was great using the Amiga scripting language (Arexx) to get it to say something when it had finished a batch job or render etc.