Andrew Shaw latest Kraftwerk cover : Tribal / Nummweltverschmutzung
Another incredible piece of work by Andrew Shaw.
As in all of his tracks, Andrew has put together a perfect cover of a Kraftwerk song, here: Tribal / Nummweltverschmutzung.
Beyond his numerous musician skills, Andrew is also a meister in taming the Votrax SC-O2 chip included in the Robovox.
In this track, the chip capabilities are pushed to the max, so I had to ask Andrew how he did it. I wanted to know if he used the external carrier audio input to achieve these results.
He did not.
He is pitching the chip and heavily modifying the staccato function in the PEC VST plugin :
He also used CC3 to drive the control rate ( movement of the formant position – see the SC-02 datasheet) at near its max value to make it sound more choppy.
Here’s a picture of just some of the automation done in Reaper, driving the note pitch (CC2) and the master clock (CC1)
Andrew kindly shared the Votrax MIDI file so you can download it and test it on your Robovox
Andrew supposes that there are a few parts for this where Florian presumably used two chips at different pitches.
Andrew had to work around this by recording the Votrax through a harmonizer – it won’t be quite the same with this “simpler” midi file.
(I just played it on my system : it is still very fun and impressive)
Ezzential Electro
Electro Records is working on a collection of 36 vinyl records collaborating with 36 different artists they consider essential to understanding the current electro music movement.
They have released the first six records, and you can hear them here: https://www.electro-records.com/catalogo/ezzential-electro/660/.
Transpac is one of the artists making beautiful and mesmerizing music with an excellent retro style.
He is certainly using some of my speech synthesizers. (also here: https://www.electro-records.com/catalogo/sci-fi-electro/585/)
Check this track by Transpac on the album Telecommunication. Track B2 Minitel.
Can you guess which module is in action ? I think this is the Mea Vox!
Updating the shop
As you may have noticed, I am busy merging the old blog into a more user-friendly shop.
I still have a lot to do to merge the old blog pages and the products pages.
The goal is to let you understand better all my products and how to use them.
I know the documentation isn’t always as expected, but I keep editing it with your feedback.
Thanks for your patience
Emy’s ecosystem
| Hardware | Features | Firmware | Status | Todo | Buy |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Emy 2018 | Emy emulates the famous TMS5220/TMS5100 speech chips and read the LPC compressed data from the SD card to allow infinite vocabulary ! | Emy QC
20/10/2019
ver. 1.2 Emy 2018 firmware
13/01/2023
ver. 1.5 | Stable | Text-to-speech from SD | |
| Emy 2019 | Same as Emy 2018 USB keyboard support Generic panel to support additional speech synth. | Emy QC
20/10/2019
ver. 1.2 Emy Firmware
27/01/2024
ver. 2.6b | Stable | Text-to-speech from SD |  |
| Emy + Kaiwa-vox | Robotic voice Japanese text-to-speech. Reads Romaji text from the SD card. | Kaiwa Firmware
22/01/2023
ver. 2.3 | Stable | USB Keyboard text entry | |
| Emy + VAX-vox | Dectalk text-to-speech. Reads plain English from the SD card and from the USB keyboard | Vax Firmware
05/06/2026
ver. 0.35 | Beta | |
|
| Emy + Mea-vox | vintage MEA8000 French speech chip (Formant generator) Text-to-speech from SD card and from the USB keyboard | Mea Firmware + MIDI USB
08/05/2022
ver. 0.6 | Alpha | |
Use a USB keyboard for text entry
Use a standard USB keyboard to enter some text and have it spoken live on VAX (soon on Kaiwa and Emy).
The keyboard is connected to a USB gender changer (provided with the last edition of Emy ) which also powers the keyboard.
The speech can be triggered by the Gate signal, pressing the rotary or by pressing Enter on the keyboard.
Basic editing is possible with the backspace character while the Escape key is erasing the current text.
There is also a gate out signal on the Busy/Aux jack that stays up while the keyboard is pressed (it is not needed for the speech but I thought it could be fun to use it)
The newer version of Emy’s PCB 1.0c allow powering the keyboard but If your PCB is 1.0b you will need to apply the following hack.
- Add a Schottky diode (like the BAT85) between the +5v via end the USB connector like shown here :
- Be careful not to overheat the via while soldering it.
- Do not use this port to power something else than a normal keyboard. The maximum current that can be provided is 300 ma.
Enjoy your new talking keyboard!
This works great with wireless keyboards too and allows triggering the speech from quite a distance.
How to add new vocabulary to Talko, the easy way
Previously, I had described here: how to do compress sound using a venerable Windows 3.1 tool: Qbox Pro. The process what quite long to set up and does not always produce good results.
Today I discovered BlueWizard from this post.
BlueWizard runs on Mac and allows to tweak the process in real time to optimize the output! The author has been kind enough to make some small tweaking just for the Arduino and Talko!
Simply open your file (which has to be recorded at 8 kHz with 16-bit depth ), click on the 2 tick boxes:
– “include hex prefix (0x)” to allow direct pasting into the Arduino IDE
(if you are using it for Emy’s SD card do not tick this box)
- and “include explicit stop frame” to avoid the library producing gibberish noise a the end of the sound
then copy the resulting the data from the “Byte Stream” windows.
Open the Arduino IDE and paste the data stream into your code before uploading it to Talko.
Let’s make a sound and process it:
say -v"alex" "We are charging our battery. And now we are full of energy. We are the robots." -r 100 -o roboter.wave
converting to 8 kHz with 16-bit depth using SoX
sox roboter.wave -r 8k -b16 roboter.wav
and the compressed version made with Talko :
the Arduino code:
// Talkie Adafruit library
// Copyright 2011 Peter Knight
// This code is released under GPLv2 license.
#include "talkie.h"
Talkie voice;
const uint8_t spROBOTS[] ={0xa6,0xd6,0x4a,0x67,0xd8,0xed,0xa8,0x9a,0x35,0x37,0xd5,0x8a,0x1c,0x72,0xbf,0x84,0xcd,0x2a,0x4a,0xca,0x42,0x50,0x77,0xed,0x6a,0x25,0xcb,0x1a,0xb3,0xa3,0xa3,0xa4,0x34,0x4b,0xb2,0xe9,0x0c,0x9b,0xd2,0xc4,0xd9,0xa7,0xca,0x6c,0x49,0x8a,0x26,0x9d,0xaa,0x28,0x2d,0xc9,0x96,0xad,0xbc,0xaa,0xb6,0x24,0x47,0xb5,0xd0,0x1c,0xd3,0x92,0x9c,0xcd,0x43,0x7c,0x68,0x4b,0x72,0xd6,0x2c,0xf6,0xa2,0x25,0xcd,0x9d,0xb3,0x4d,0xc6,0xa4,0xb4,0x4c,0x8a,0x32,0x19,0x9d,0x92,0xb2,0xc8,0xd2,0x79,0x92,0x89,0xeb,0x14,0x36,0xd3,0x26,0x04,0xd8,0x79,0x2c,0x01,0xbb,0x5e,0xb6,0x68,0x8e,0xed,0x2e,0x8b,0xdd,0xea,0x51,0xd3,0xd3,0x35,0x4e,0xcb,0x73,0x74,0xf3,0xd4,0x38,0xa3,0x4c,0xd9,0xdd,0xc3,0xed,0x96,0x2a,0x76,0xb5,0x36,0x5d,0x9c,0xaa,0x38,0x4c,0xc7,0x75,0x52,0xaa,0xc3,0x14,0x5b,0xb3,0x51,0xa1,0x0e,0xdd,0x64,0x92,0x4f,0x86,0x3a,0x54,0x89,0x31,0x99,0x98,0xea,0x58,0x38,0x27,0x64,0x42,0xa8,0x73,0x81,0x49,0x8b,0x91,0xa6,0x4e,0x19,0x36,0x22,0x4a,0x88,0x3a,0x25,0x98,0x0c,0x2b,0x69,0x9a,0xa4,0x49,0xbd,0xb2,0x56,0x69,0x46,0x55,0x66,0xd5,0xb6,0xa5,0x19,0x95,0xd8,0x2c,0xda,0xb4,0xa6,0x5a,0x52,0x8f,0xac,0x53,0x9a,0x62,0xd1,0xab,0x2a,0x72,0x68,0xb3,0xc1,0xd8,0xcc,0xd0,0xae,0x8b,0x8a,0xe2,0xd2,0x4c,0xb9,0x4e,0x1b,0xed,0x56,0xb7,0x62,0x3a,0x63,0xa4,0xdd,0xd3,0x4a,0xe8,0x8a,0xc1,0x95,0x52,0x45,0xa9,0x2d,0x16,0x47,0xcb,0x94,0xb4,0xa6,0x65,0x2a,0x8b,0x92,0xdb,0x9a,0x5a,0x25,0xd2,0x2a,0x6c,0xab,0x6b,0x93,0x32,0x6f,0xab,0xa3,0xce,0xd5,0x32,0x2d,0xeb,0xb4,0x3a,0x55,0xcb,0x32,0x7f,0x54,0xea,0xd8,0xac,0x5a,0xed,0x76,0xaa,0x63,0xb7,0x18,0x93,0xcb,0xa1,0x8e,0x43,0x7d,0x54,0xae,0x84,0x3a,0x0e,0x8e,0x15,0x99,0x93,0xea,0x58,0x38,0x43,0xbd,0x32,0xab,0x6d,0xe2,0x0c,0xd7,0x21,0xa4,0x8a,0x5a,0xc2,0xc3,0x62,0x95,0xac,0x24,0x71,0xf7,0xa8,0x55,0x8a,0xe4,0xb9,0xdd,0xcb,0x48,0x2b,0x72,0xb0,0x68,0xcb,0x30,0x23,0xcf,0x49,0xa3,0x3c,0x43,0xb7,0x34,0x17,0xad,0xb4,0x32,0xd3,0xd2,0xd2,0xa4,0xdd,0xdb,0x6c,0x4b,0x73,0x93,0xb6,0x28,0xa9,0x25,0xcd,0x4d,0xda,0x23,0xa5,0x96,0x3c,0x16,0x1b,0x8b,0xb0,0x9a,0xca,0x50,0xbc,0x2c,0xdd,0x6a,0xa8,0x93,0xd7,0x96,0xb2,0xb0,0xae,0x2d,0x51,0x92,0xd3,0x2b,0x87,0x3e,0x17,0x0e,0x6d,0x19,0xeb,0x86,0x34,0xb1,0x35,0xb4,0xaa,0x19,0xe2,0x80,0xd1,0xf4,0xaa,0x66,0x88,0x1d,0x46,0x23,0xa3,0xba,0x21,0x35,0x1c,0x89,0x8e,0x1a,0x86,0x92,0xa1,0x3c,0xb2,0x6c,0x18,0xb3,0x61,0xad,0xb1,0xd8,0x61,0x2c,0x86,0xa4,0x26,0xa2,0x84,0xa9,0x28,0xd2,0x9a,0x8c,0x1d,0xa6,0x66,0x88,0x63,0x2a,0x4e,0x98,0xba,0x61,0xf2,0x99,0xd0,0xee,0x1f,0x0a,0xc5,0x2b,0xad,0x88,0x7f,0x6a,0x50,0x6f,0xb5,0x03,0x00,0x00,0x00,0x00,0x00,0x00,0x00,0x00,0x00,0x00,0x00,0xee,0xad,0x49,0x32,0x2b,0xa3,0xb6,0xa2,0x46,0x75,0xcf,0x2c,0xdd,0x8a,0xe2,0x34,0x33,0xd2,0x4c,0x2b,0x8a,0x93,0xb2,0x0e,0x29,0xad,0x2c,0x5e,0xd2,0xab,0x24,0x97,0x32,0x3b,0x49,0xef,0xa4,0x6c,0x4a,0x69,0x74,0xad,0x8c,0x89,0xa9,0x84,0xd1,0xd3,0x66,0x47,0xa6,0x92,0x5a,0xcf,0x5a,0x1c,0x9b,0x8a,0x5b,0x5b,0x0b,0x75,0xa2,0x2a,0x18,0xe3,0x3c,0x4c,0x89,0xa8,0x40,0x8e,0x75,0x37,0x39,0xa9,0xf4,0x5a,0x2b,0xad,0xe8,0xb4,0x3c,0x59,0x2b,0xcf,0xa0,0xd2,0xb2,0x9c,0x24,0x3d,0x53,0xca,0x48,0x4a,0xd5,0xb4,0x48,0x39,0x2d,0x2e,0x55,0x4b,0x33,0xe4,0xb4,0x38,0x37,0x2d,0x29,0x97,0xdd,0x92,0xdc,0x2d,0xd5,0x5b,0xca,0x48,0x52,0x8d,0x0c,0xab,0xc8,0x2d,0x4d,0xa5,0x22,0x34,0xcb,0x94,0x2c,0xb6,0x76,0xb7,0x1c,0x53,0xf2,0xd0,0x2a,0x4d,0xb3,0x4a,0x2a,0x43,0xef,0x10,0xcb,0xc9,0xae,0xb4,0x7d,0x9c,0xd5,0xeb,0xa8,0x5a,0x95,0x4d,0x62,0xab,0x6d,0x1a,0x95,0x37,0xc8,0xad,0x74,0x68,0x54,0x4a,0x37,0xcf,0x2a,0xa1,0x75,0xd6,0x2a,0xa3,0xc2,0xa4,0x2e,0x69,0xf6,0xae,0x2a,0x5d,0xba,0x62,0x48,0x33,0x6b,0x72,0x69,0x5b,0x24,0xb1,0xaa,0x29,0xad,0xed,0x99,0xd9,0xc2,0xa7,0xb4,0xa6,0x7a,0x55,0x77,0x9d,0xd3,0x9a,0xe2,0xdd,0xc3,0x65,0x76,0xab,0x73,0xc8,0x28,0xa7,0x45,0xad,0x4e,0x39,0xb3,0x9c,0x96,0x94,0x2a,0xf5,0x88,0x50,0x9d,0xe2,0xaa,0xf8,0xb0,0x8a,0xbc,0x91,0xa9,0xe2,0xa1,0x68,0xd2,0xc6,0xae,0xce,0x2e,0xc3,0xcd,0x2c,0xbb,0x75,0xf8,0x8e,0x0c,0xb3,0xad,0x80,0xe5,0xba,0x14,0x30,0x43,0x87,0x02,0x56,0xac,0x48,0xe7,0x70,0x61,0x61,0x96,0x34,0xc5,0xc9,0x54,0x44,0xa8,0xe3,0x54,0xf8,0x56,0xaa,0xee,0x4d,0x52,0xe9,0xcb,0x18,0x5b,0x2c,0x4a,0x65,0x08,0x93,0x2c,0xf6,0x28,0x94,0xbe,0x8e,0x52,0xe4,0xa4,0x50,0xfa,0xb0,0x41,0x16,0x97,0x5c,0x69,0xd2,0x39,0x5b,0x4e,0x09,0x65,0xf0,0x93,0x42,0x35,0x25,0x95,0x21,0xb4,0x99,0x76,0xb9,0x52,0x46,0x57,0x16,0xb2,0x61,0x5b,0x99,0x5c,0x9a,0x59,0x47,0x29,0x65,0x92,0x63,0x62,0x55,0xb6,0x54,0x99,0x8d,0xa9,0xc7,0x98,0x54,0x47,0x55,0xe6,0x16,0x93,0x5d,0x9b,0x65,0xa8,0xa9,0x57,0x71,0x6d,0xd2,0xec,0x69,0x56,0xba,0x35,0xc5,0xa9,0x85,0xe4,0xe8,0xd1,0x14,0x6f,0x9e,0x56,0xa3,0x46,0x53,0xbd,0x79,0x6a,0x97,0x2e,0x75,0x4e,0x12,0x19,0x2d,0x26,0xd4,0x29,0x70,0xf2,0x98,0xe5,0x50,0x25,0xcb,0xc5,0x6b,0xa1,0x53,0x9d,0x03,0xb5,0x96,0x06,0x0d,0x75,0x4e,0xd8,0x56,0x56,0xd4,0x35,0xb9,0x60,0x45,0xe8,0x50,0xd7,0xe6,0x0a,0x99,0xa5,0x47,0x5c,0x57,0x2a,0x78,0x94,0xce,0x12,0x43,0x0a,0x50,0x5e,0x51,0x29,0x8c,0xa3,0xa6,0x10,0x6a,0xb2,0x04,0xcc,0xd1,0x5e,0x86,0x99,0x94,0x59,0xbd,0x53,0x1a,0xab,0x61,0xf1,0xea,0x44,0x69,0xcc,0x86,0x2c,0x36,0x23,0xa7,0x31,0x5b,0xd6,0xb8,0x88,0x55,0xc6,0xe6,0x58,0x64,0x72,0x4e,0x19,0xbb,0x67,0x9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void setup() {
}
void loop() {
voice.say(spROBOTS);
}
New Talko firmware : VCO mode can play semi-tones
The rev 2 of Talko’s firmware can now play notes over 2 octaves.
It may seem obvious to have a 1V/octave CV to note in a VCO mode but this was quite challenging to achieve. (I may explain the process in another post as it could be also applied for another of my speech synths)
Connections
Quite easy: just feed a pitch signal into the Pitch entry. Tune the synth up and down with the Bend pot and trigger the note with the Gate.
Set it to Bank 16 and play with the Sound pot to choose among the 26 vowels sounds.
(*) Please note that the Microbrute’s gate out can’t trigger Talko directly (it’s a Microbrute know impedance issue): use a gate buffer in between.
Sounds
The VCO sound very much like an organ and it’s quite fun to pass the audio through a guitar pedal like the Zoom 505:
The Microbrute can also send notes via its sequencer: this allows instant fun for the poor keyboard player like me!
Firmware
The code is available here: Talko 1.2 rev2
Right click to save it as a .hex file and use Easy uploader to install it into Talko.
User Manual
The manual has been updated to reflect this revision : https://www.polaxis.be/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Talko-Manual-1_2.pdf
Talko Eurorack countdown timer
Here is a little countdown timer I developed for Hataken to help in timing mini gigs.
It work like this :
- Choose the amount of time from 0 to 19 minutes with the BANK knob.
- Start the timer with a gate signal or by pressing the rotary switch.
- The display will countdown and blink once per second until the end of the timer.
- A the end of the timer, the BEND signal will go high (4.5V max, if the BEND knob is fully turned clockwise) and the alarm will ring if the bend switch is ON
While running you can :
- Run silently (mode switch UP),
- Tick every second (mode switch NEUTRAL),
- Tick and have the minutes left spoken (mode switch DOWN).
- Use the BEND switch to set or mute the alarm sound
- Stop the timer by pressing the rotary switch (or using a Gate signal to do so)
Note : The SOUND and BEND pots are not used
Here is how it sounds like :
The code is available here : talko_timer_Hataken.hex
Right click to save it as a .hex file and use Easy uploader to install it into Talko.
The next iteration will have an interface with Processing to display the countdown on a big display.
3 new sounds banks for Talko
Talko’s code has been updated with 3 new sounds banks :
Bank 15 : French Vowels Male (5)
Bank 16 : English voiced allophones (72)
Bank 17 : VCO friendly voiced allophones (25)
This bank is a selection of allophones from bank 16 that produces nice looping sounds in VCO mode (great for mouth drumming for example)
The new code is available here
and can be uploaded with Easy uploader as described on the downloads page.
The updated manual is to be found here.
Have fun !