Polaxis — Talking Machines
New: Teletype
Five keys. Four knobs. A compact MIDI controller for Kraftor, synths and music software.
Polaxis talking machines
Give your machines a voice.
One host. Many possible voices.
Characterful speech instruments, interchangeable Vox daughterboards, and browser tools for shaping electronic voices.
The Polaxis system
Hosts are the instruments.
Vox boards are the voices.
Emy and Kraftor host interchangeable Vox daughterboards. Change the Vox board and you change the speech engine, language, texture and personality of the instrument. Talko 2 is different: it is a complete, self-contained speech instrument.
Hardware
Choose your instrument
Three different ways to bring synthetic speech into your setup.
Kraftor
MIDI-first desktop host for Vox boards. Play and sequence speech from your studio, controller or computer while keeping the voice engine interchangeable.
Emy
Expandable Eurorack host for Vox boards. Emy brings interchangeable speech engines into a modular system.
Currently sold out — a new version is in development.
Talko 2
A self-contained speech instrument, primarily for Eurorack. Talko 2 has its own voice architecture and is also available in stand-alone formats.
In development
PicoVox is coming.
PicoVox runs a Robotrax emulation. More will be announced soon.
Two approaches to speech
Words or building blocks
Text-to-speech
Type words and sentences. The engine performs the text-to-phoneme conversion and generates speech. It is the quickest route from language to a voice.
Phonemes & allophones
Compose speech from its smallest sound units. This gives direct rhythmic and sonic control, including sounds that do not need to behave like ordinary language.
Companion software
Tools for shaping speech
The hardware is only part of the instrument. Polaxis also builds focused browser tools for composing, designing and connecting voices.
Translators & interfaces
Turn text into engine-specific phonemes or allophones, then connect the result to Kraftor or another compatible hardware workflow.
Voice designers
Open the dedicated designers for Nexus Vox, VAX Vox and Sino Vox to shape the controls available on each text-to-speech engine.
Echo
A practical browser-based serial terminal for connecting to Polaxis devices over USB. Useful, open, and intentionally secondary to the instruments themselves.
Polaxis community
Follow the work.
Join the conversation.
New builds, experiments and restocks appear first on Instagram. For technical questions, ideas and conversation with other users, join the Polaxis Discord community.
What is happening at Polaxis?
See new instruments, development notes, software tools and availability updates.