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                   COMP.SPEECH FAQ POSTING - PART 3/3


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                              Speech Synthesis

                         comp.speech FAQ Section 5

          * SpeechLinks: Speech Synthesis
          * Q5.1: What is speech synthesis?
          * Q5.2: How can speech synthesis be performed?
          * Q5.3: References/Books on Synthesis
          * Q5.4: Speech Synthesis on the WWW
          * Q5.5: Speech Synthesis Software/Hardware


___________________________________________________________________________

                        Q5.1: What is speech synthesis?

   Speech synthesis programs convert written input to spoken output by
   automatically generating synthetic speech. Speech synthesis is often
   referred to a "Text-to-Speech" conversion (TTS).


___________________________________________________________________________

                       Q5.2: Performing speech synthesis

   There are several algorithms. The choice depends on the task they're
   used for. The easiest way is to just record the voice of a person
   speaking the desired phrases. This is useful if only a restricted
   volume of phrases and sentences is used, e.g. messages in a train
   station, or schedule information via phone. The quality depends on the
   way recording is done.

   More sophisticated but worse in quality are algorithms which split the
   speech into smaller pieces. The smaller those units are, the less are
   they in number, but the quality also decreases. An often used unit is
   the phoneme, the smallest linguistic unit. Depending on the language
   used there are about 35-50 phonemes in western European languages,
   i.e. there are 35-50 single recordings. The problem is combining them
   as fluent speech requires fluent transitions between the elements. The
   intellegibility is therefore lower, but the memory required is small.

   A solution to this dilemma is using diphones. Instead of splitting at
   the transitions, the cut is done at the center of the phonemes,
   leaving the transitions themselves intact. This gives about 400
   elements (20*20) and the quality increases.

   The longer the units become, the more elements are there, but the
   quality increases along with the memory required. Other units which
   are widely used are half-syllables, syllables, words, or combinations
   of them, e.g. word stems and inflectional endings.

   The Museum of Speech Analysis and Synthesis has pictures of artificial
   speech systems going back over 150 years: worth a visit. (
   http://mambo.ucsc.edu/psl/smus/smus.html)


___________________________________________________________________________

                      Q5.3: References/Books on Synthesis

  Books and Papers

     * Thierry Dutoit, An Introduction to Text-to-Speech Synthesis,
       Kluwer Academic Publishers (Dordrecht), 1997, ISBN 0-7923-4498-7,
       312 pages. Volume 3 in the series on Text, Speech and Language
       Technology.
     * Douglas O'Shaughnessy, Speech Communication: Human and Machine
       Addison Wesley series in Electrical Engineering: Digital Signal
       Processing, 1987.
     * T.V. Raman, Auditory User Interfaces --Toward The Speaking
       Computer Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston, ISBN 0-7923-9984-6,
       August 1997, 168 pp.
     * D. H. Klatt, "Review of Text-To-Speech Conversion for English",
       Jnl. of the Acoustic Society of America (JASA), Vol 82, pp
       737-793.
     * "Talking Machines, Theories, Models and Designs" Eds, G. Bailly &
       C. Benoit (Elsevier: North Holland)
     * I. H. Witten. Principles of Computer Speech, London: Academic
       Press, Inc., 1982.
     * W.B. Kleijn and K.K. Paliwal (Eds.), Speech Coding and Synthesis,
       Elsevier, Amsterdam, 1995.
       Contents, preface etc on the WWW:
       http://www.elsevier.nl/section/engtech/scs/menu.htm
     * John Allen, Sharon Hunnicut and Dennis H. Klatt, "From Text to
       Speech: The MITalk System", Cambridge University Press, 1987.
     * J.P.H. van Santen, R. W. Sproat, J. P. Olive, and J. Hirschberg,
       "Progress in Speech Synthesis", Springer, 1996.

  On the WWW

     * Survey of the State of the Art in Human Language Technology
       Report edited by Ronald A. Cole et. al. with a section on
       Text-to-Speech Technologies.
       http://www.cse.ogi.edu/CSLU/HLTsurvey/ch5node1.html

  Bibliographies and Reference Lists

     * WWW searchable online-bibiliography for Phonetics and Speech
       Technology with more than 8000 entries. Provided by Institut fur
       Phonetik at Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universitat Frankfurt.
       http://www.uni-frankfurt.de/~ifb/bib_engl.html
     * Computational Speech Processing: Speech Analysis, Recognition,
       Understanding, Compression, Transmission, Coding, Synthesis ; Text
       to Speech Systems, Speech to Tactile Displays, Speaker
       Identification, Prosody Processing : BIBLIOGRAPHY, by Conrad F.
       Sabourin, 1994, 2 volumes, 1187p, ISBN 2-921173-21-2, INFOLINGUA
       inc., P.O. Box 187 Snowdon, Montreal, H3X 3T4, Canada.
       See also: http://gomer.mlink.net/infolingua.html


___________________________________________________________________________

                   Q5.4: Speech Synthesis on the WWW

   Most of the following are links to WWW pages with demonstrations of
   speech synthesis. Plenty more links are included in the detailed list
   of speech synthesis software/hardware in Q5.5.

   Speech Synthesis "Museum"
          URL: http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~jpi/synth/museum.html
          Maintained by Jon Iles ([e-mail]) at the
          University of Birmingham.
          Information and speech samples for

          + YorkTalk
          + Loughborough Sound Images
          + University of Birmingham - FDFS
          + Eurovocs
          + DECtalk
          + AT&T Bell Labs Synthesiser
          + S.W.A.Ll.C. - Welsh Synthesis from CSTR
          + All-Prosodic Speech Synthesis - IPOX
          + Orator from Bellcore

   The Festival Speech Synthesis System
          http://www.cstr.ed.ac.uk/projects/festival.html
          Pre-synthesized examples in English, Welsh and Spanish, and
          online demo of English.

   Pavarobotti
          http://www.shc.uiowa.edu/fun/pavarobotti/pavarobotti.html
          WWW demo of the Pavarobotti synthesis technology developed at
          the National Center for Voice and Speech
          (http://www.shc.uiowa.edu/ncvs_home.html).

   Say...
          http://wwwtios.cs.utwente.nl/say
          WWW demo of the rsynth speech synthesis software. The WWW
          capability was implemented by Axel Belinfante.

   Musee sonore de la synthese de la Parole en francais
          http://www.icp.grenet.fr/exemples_synthese/ex.html
          Speech synthesis examples from a series of French language
          speech synthesisers plus links to other speech synthesis demo
          pages.

          + ICP-Grenoble
          + CNET-Lannion (with TD-PSOLA)
          + KTH-Stockholm
          + Universite-Mons - several versions

   Lucent Technologies Bell Labs Text-to-Speech
          http://www.bell-labs.com/project/tts/
          Demos and samples of the latest Lucent Technologies Bell Labs
          Text-to-Speech system.

   WATSON FlexTalk from AT&T Advanced Speech Products Group
          http://www.att.com/aspg/demo.html
          WWW interface to the WATSON FlexTalk speech synthesis
          demonstration.

   AT&T Bell Laboratories Voices
          http://www.research.att.com/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/mjm/voices.cgi
          WWW interface to the AT&T Bell Laboratories text to speech
          (TTS) synthesizer

   Laureate from British Telecom
          http://www.labs.bt.com/innovate/speech/laureate/
          Demo of the Laureate speech synthesis system - not yet
          commercially available.

   ORATOR from Bellcore
          Online demo of the ORATOR system developed at Bellcore.
          http://www.bellcore.com/ORATOR/

   SVOX from TIK, ETH in Zurich
          http://www.tik.ee.ethz.ch/cgi-bin/w3svox
          Demo of German speech synthesis from Institut fur Technische
          Informatik und Kommunikationsnetze.

   Speech Synthesis Research at OGI
          http://www.cse.ogi.edu/CSLU/research/TTS
          Examples of diphone speech corpora and algorithms developed at
          OGI for synthesis of American English and Mexican Spanish using
          the Festival framework.

   Lyricos
          http://www.cse.ogi.edu/CSLU/research/TTS/research/sing.html
          Demos of the Lyricos singing voice synthesis system.
          Concatenation-based synthesis of singing voice from MIDI input.

   Multi-Lingual TTS from Gerhard-Mercator University, Duisburg
          http://www.fb9-ti.uni-duisburg.de/demos/speech.html
          Synthesis in German, English or Japanese.

   TMH: Institutionen for Taloverforing och Musikakustik, Kungliga
          Tekniska Hogskolan
          http://www.speech.kth.se/info/software.html
          Synthesis in Swedish, Finish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Danish,
          British and American English, French, German, Italian, Spanish,
          LA Spanish and Greek.

   Haskins Laboratory WWW Site
          http://www.haskins.yale.edu/Haskins/MISC/special.html
          Examples of several types of speech synthesis. Articulatory
          Synthesis by HyperASY. SineWave Synthesis. Gestural
          Computational Model. Pattern Playback system of the 1940's!

   BeSTspeech from Berkeley Speech Technologies, Inc., (BST)
          http://www.bestspeech.com/weblang.html

   Eurovocs Multilingual Speech Synthesis
          http://www.elis.rug.ac.be/ELISgroups/speech/research/eurovocs.h
          tml
          Based on Lernout and Hauspie technology.

   HADIFIX German Speech Synthesis
          http://asl1.ikp.uni-bonn.de/~tpo/Hadiq.en.html
          Provided by the Instituts fur Kommunikationsforschung und
          Phonetik, Universitat Bonn.

   Centigram's TruVoice Demo
          http://www.centigram.com/centigram/TruVoice/index.html
          Allows control of speech rate, pitch and other prosodic
          charateristics.

   MBROLA: Free Speech Synthesis Project
          http://tcts.fpms.ac.be/synthesis/modelcmp.html
          WWW demo of MBROLA which compares the quality of PSOLA,
          MBR-PSOLA, LPC, and Hybrid Harmonic/Stochastic concatenative
          synthesizers. Provided by the TCTS Lab, Faculti Polytechnique
          de Mons, Belgium

   Institute of Phonetic Sciences
          http://fonsg3.let.uva.nl/IFA-Features.html
          Links to lots of on-line speech synthesis demonstrations
          provided by the Institute of Phonetic Sciences of the Faculty
          of Arts of the University of Amsterdam.

   Yahoo page on speech generation
          http://www.yahoo.com/Science/Computer_Science/Artificial_Intell
          igence/Natural_Language_Processing/Speech_Generation/


___________________________________________________________________________

                   Q5.5: Speech Synthesis Software/Hardware

   Please email any updates, corrections or additions to the following
   list. The range of commercially available synthesis software is
   growing rapidly so any help in keeping up to date will be appreciated.

   Other lists of speech synthesis software on the WWW include:

    Kevin Lenzo's list of Macintosh Speech Resources and Apps
          http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~lenzo/mac_speech_apps.html

    Speech Toys Speech Synthesis Information
          http://www.speechtoys.com/spchtoys/spsyn.html

  In the FAQ...

   The following speech recognition software/hardware is described in the
   comp.speech FAQ.

   _Apple Macintosh_
          * BeSTspeech from Berkeley Speech Technologies, Inc., (BST)
          * Infovox Product Range
          * Macintosh Speech Output Applications
          * Macintosh Speech Synthesis Manager
          * MacYack Pro
          * MBROLA: Free Speech Synthesis Project
          * ProVoice Developer's Speech Toolkit from First Byte
          * SENSYN speech synthesizer
          * Sound Bytes DeveloperUs Kit
          * Macintosh Speech Synthesis Manager

   _Windows (including 95, NT, 3.1)_
          * AcuVoice
          * AT&T Watson Speech Synthesis
          * BeSTspeech from Berkeley Speech Technologies, Inc., (BST)
          * Creative TextAssist and TextAssist API
          * DECtalk: Text-to-Speech from Digital
          * ETI-Eloquence
          * HADIFIX
          * Infovox Product Range
          * IPOX: All Prosodic Speech Synthesis Architecture
          * Lernout and Hauspie Text-To-Speech Windows SDK
          * Listen2 Text Reader
          * MBROLA: Free Speech Synthesis Project
          * Monologue for Windows from First Byte
          * PAM - A Text-To-Speech Application
          * ProVerbe Speech Engine from ELAN Informatique
          * ProVoice Developer's Speech Toolkit from First Byte
          * SENSYN speech synthesizer
          * Sound Bytes DeveloperUs Kit
          * Tinytalk
          * TruVoice from Centigram
          * WinSpeech
          * ZMD Speech Synthesis

   _DOS_
          * CSRE: Computerized Speech Research Environment
          * Infovox Product Range
          * MBROLA: Free Speech Synthesis Project
          * ProVoice Developer's Speech Toolkit from First Byte
          * SENSYN speech synthesizer
          * spchsyn.exe
          * Tinytalk
          * ZMD Speech Synthesis

   _OS/2_
          * ProVerbe Speech Engine from ELAN Informatique
          * ProVoice Developer's Speech Toolkit from First Byte
          * Sound Bytes DeveloperUs Kit

   _Unix_
          * AcuVoice
          * AsTeR
          * BeSTspeech from Berkeley Speech Technologies, Inc., (BST)
          * DECtalk: Text-to-Speech from Digital
          * ETI-Eloquence
          * Emacspeak - A Speech Output Subsystem For Emacs
          * Festival Speech Synthesis System
          * JSRU
          * Klatt-style synthesiser
          * KPE80 - A Klatt Synthesiser and Parameter Editor
          * "learph": Trainable text-to-phoneme software by Antonio Lucca

          * Lucent Technologies Bell Labs Text-to-Speech system
          * MBROLA: Free Speech Synthesis Project
          * Orator from Bellcore
          * ProVerbe Speech Engine from ELAN Informatique
          * rsynth
          * SENSYN speech synthesizer
          * SGI Developers Toolbox Synthesiser
          * Speak
          * TrueTalk
          * TruVoice from Centigram

   _Integrated Circuits and Dedicated Hardware_
          * Eurovocs
          * Infovox Product Range
          * ProVerbe Speech Engine from ELAN Informatique
          * RC Systems V8600/V8601 Text to Speech synthesizers

   _Other Platforms_
          * BeSTspeech from Berkeley Speech Technologies, Inc., (BST)
          * TheBigMouth (NeXT)
          * MBROLA: Free Speech Synthesis Project
          * Narrator Translator Library (Amiga)
          * Narrator (Amiga)
          * TextToSpeech Kit (NeXT)
          * Orator from Bellcore
          * SENSYN speech synthesizer
          * WreadFiles: File reader for Commodore Amiga

   _Unknown_
          * Lernout and Hauspie Text-To-Speech (3 products)
          * SIMTEL
          * Text to Phoneme Program 1
          * Text to phoneme program 2
          * Text to phoneme program 3



AcuVoice

     * Platform: Windows, Solaris
     * Description: AcuVoice is a natural sounding text-to-speech system
       built using a concatenative approach. Currently it is available
       for an American English Male Voice. Software Developer Kits are
       available for the Windows Platform (32-Bit) and also for the
       Solaris Platform. More information and samples are available on
       the Acuvoice web site.
     * Contact: AcuVoice, Inc.
       84 W. Santa Clara Street, Suite 720, San Jose, CA 95113-1810
       Ph: 1(408)289-1661, Fax: [phone]
       Demo: 1(408)289-1177
       Email: [e-mail]
       WWW: http://www.acuvoice.com/



AsTeR

     * Platform: UNIX
     * Description: TTS front-end program which encodes structural
       information about documents in speech synthesis. For more
       information check out:

                http://www.research.digital.com/CRL/personal/raman/aster/
                aster-toplevel.html

     * Operation requirements: Lisp: Lucid, clisp
     * Contact: T. V. Raman
       WWW: http://www.research.digital.com/CRL/personal/raman/raman.html

       Email: [e-mail]



AT&T Watson Speech Synthesis

     * Platform: Windows 95/NT on a Pentium 75 Mhz or higher
     * Description: Watson is a software implementation of AT&T Bell
       Laboratories voice processing technology. Watson includes BLASR
       Speech Recognition (see Q6.6) and FlexTalk speech synthesis. It
       requires no special hardware to run other than a standard sound
       card and/or phone card. Technical details for the FlexTalk speech
       synthesis include:
          + Compliant with MS Speech API.
          + Male and Female Voices available
          + 8 KHz and 11 KHz output
          + SoundBlaster compatible sound card and drivers required
          + Context sensitive abbreviation expansion
          + Accurate pronunciation of most proper names
          + Adjustable vocal tract size, speed, volume, pitch, etc.
          + American English only - other languages in development
       The AT&T Advanced Speech Products Group home page provides more
       detailed information including a Frequently Asked Questions list,
       information for application developers on the Independent Software
       Vendor (ISV) Program (including info on the SDK, licensing, and
       the training program).
     * Requirements: Uses 2 MB RAM, 10 MB Disk. Requires a Pentium 75 MHz
       or higher (uses
     * Cost and Availability: WATSON is a software-based speech platform
       with a Software Developers Kit (SDK) that allows application
       developers to use voice processing in their applications. It is
       not available as a stand-alone product.
       Licensing information (inc. price) is provided in the AT&T
       Advanced Speech Products Group home page
     * See also: Watson BLASR speech recognition in Q6.5, Microsoft
       Speech API, and Advanced Speech API.
     * Contact: AT&T Advanced Speech Products Group
       Suite 700, 44 East Mifflin Street, Madison, WI 53703, USA
       Ph: 1-800-5-WATSON, Fax: [phone]
       Email: [e-mail]
       WWW: http://www.att.com/aspg/



BeSTspeech from Berkeley Speech Technologies, Inc., (BST)

     * Platform: available for Macintosh, Sun, Silicon Graphics, Windows
       PC and IBM RS/6000 platforms, and can be ported to others.
     * Description: BeSTspeech reads ASCII text no vocabulary limits.
       Available for Dutch, English (male and female), French, German,
       Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Arabic, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean,
       Malay, Mandarin and Russian.
     * Availability: Berkeley Speech Technologies, Inc does not sell end
       user toolkits or products.
     * Contact: Berkeley Speech Technologies, Inc.
       2246 Sixth Street, Berkeley, California 94710, USA
       Ph: [phone], Fax: [phone]
       Email: [e-mail]
       WWW: http://www.bestspeech.com/index.html



TheBigMouth - a Text to Speech Program

     * Platform: NeXT
     * Description: Text to speech program based on concatenation of
       pre-recorded speech segments.
     * Availability:
       ftp://ftp.cs.keio.ac.jp/pub/NeXT/source/TheBigMouth1.0.tar.Z



Creative TextAssist

     * Platform: Windows
     * Description: Based on DECtalk speech synthesis. A detailed
       description of TextAssist is provided on the Creative WWW pages.
       TextAssist TextReader provides a convenient Windows user interface
       for text reading.
     * Availability: Creative TextAssist is bundled with most (all?)
       Creative Sound Blaster audio cards. TextAssist preview software is
       available from the Creative Labs TextAssist home page.
     * Contact: Creative Labs, Inc.
       Address, phone, email etc unknown
       WWW: http://www.creaf.com/ :
       http://www.creaf.com/wwwnew/tech/devcnr/tassist.html

Creative TextAssist API

     * Platform: Windows
     * Description: The TextAssist API (TAAPI) is created for Microsoft
       Windows 3.1x and Windows 95 developers who intend to develop
       16-bit Text-to-Speech software applications using Creative's
       TextAssist speech engine. It supports direct control of speech
       output characteristics, concurrent playback of text-to-speech and
       wave files, foreign language support, speech synchronization,
       exception dictionaries. It also includes a voice editing tool for
       creating new custom voices, a Visual Basic Custom Control for
       high-level support in Visual Basic and other languages
     * Availability: The TextAssist API is released to registered
       developers at no cost.
     * Contact: WWW: http://www.creaf.com/
       FAQ: http://www.creaf.com/wwwnew/tech/devcnr/tassfaq.html



CSRE: Computerized Speech Research Environment

     * Platform: DOS
     * Description: CSRE is a software system which includes in an
       implementation of the Klatt speech synthesizer. See the CSRE entry
       in Q1.9 and the AVAAZ WWW pages for more detail.
     * Contact: AVAAZ Innovations Inc.
       P.O.Box 8040, 1225 Wonderland Rd. N, London, Ontario, CANADA, N6G
       2B0
       Ph: [phone] , Fax: [phone]
       Email: [e-mail]
       WWW: http://www.icis.on.ca/homepages/avaaz/



DECtalk Speech Synthesis

     * Platform: Windows NT, Alpha with Digital UNIX and RS232 ports
     * Description: Converts ordinary text into natural-sounding,
       intelligible speech. Provides personalized voices, and extensive
       user controls. DECtalk technology is available for the following
       packaging options.
          + DECtalk PC card option: An industry-standard ISA/EISA bus
            card implementation that can be integrated with any Intel 486
            processor-based system running DOS or Windows. Applications
            can be interfaced to the bus via a DOS Terminate and Stay
            Resident (TSR) driver or a Windows Dynamic Link Library
            (DLL). This option is available with an external speaker with
            volume control and headphone jack.
          + DECtalk Express external package: An external, portable
            package that you can plug in to any PC or serial port. The
            external package includes a built-in speaker and headphone
            jack, plus combined on/off and volume controls and a
            rechargeable battery pack.
          + DECtalk Software solution: Software-only text to speech for
            Alpha or Intel systems running Windows NT or Alpha systems
            running Digital UNIX. Provides complete speech synthesis
            capabilities so developers can enhance applications with
            DECtalk technology. DECtalk Software output can be directed
            to audio devices, into WAVE files, or into memory buffers.
     * Pricing:
       ://www.systems.digital.com/DIcatalog/html/DECtalk-Speech-Synthesis
       -oi.html
     * More Information:
       Digital Equipment Corporation WWW pages: http://www.digital.com/
       DECtalk page:
       http://www.systems.digital.com/DIcatalog/html/DECtalk-Software.htm
       l
       Ph: 1-800-DIGITAL

DECtalk Software

     * Platform: Digital UNIX and Windows NT
     * Description: DECtalk converts standard ASCII text into natural,
       intelligible speech. Speech output through any audio device is
       supported by Microsoft Video for Windows or Multimedia Services
       for Digital UNIX. An API gives developers direct access to
       text-to-speech functions. Provides nine voice personalities (4
       female, 4 male, 1 child). Provides punctuation and tonal control,
       supports customized pronunciation of trade jargon and acronyms.
       Common programming interface works with both Alpha and Intel
       platforms.
     * More Information:
       Digital Equipment Corporation WWW pages: http://www.digital.com/
       DECtalk Software page:
       http://www.systems.digital.com/DIcatalog/html/DECtalk-Software.htm
       l
       WWW:
       http://www.systems.digital.com/DIcatalog/html/DECtalk-Speech-Synth
       esis.html
       Ph: 1-800-DIGITAL



ETI-Eloquence

     * Platform: MS Windows (Win95,NT,3.1), Solaris, SunOS, SGI, RS/6000
     * Description: ETI-Eloquence is a software based text-to-speech
       system. It generates waveforms completely algorithmically instead
       of by concatenating waveforms, for maximum flexibility and
       naturalism. For instance, when the user requests a deeper voice,
       the software simulates a larger vocal tract, instead of simply
       pitch-shifting samples. It uses high-level linguistic parsing,
       which obviates the need for a huge dictionary. It handles numbers,
       acronyms, currency, etc. It includes a set of annotation symbols,
       for placing stress on particular words, expressing
       excitement/boredom, etc. Also allows phonetic input. Supports MS
       SAPI.
       Produces male and female voices for General American English.
       Dialects under development include Alabama and Brooklyn.
     * Price: Flexible license agreements on application.
     * Availability:Eloquent Technology, Inc.
       2389 North Triphammer Road, Ithaca, NY 14850 , USA
       Ph: [phone], Fax: [phone]
       Email: [e-mail]
       WWW: http://www.eloq.com/



Emacspeak - A Speech Output Subsystem For Emacs

     * Platform: UNIX, Emacs
     * Description: Emacspeak is a speech output system that will allow
       someone who cannot see to work directly on a UNIX system.
       Emacspeak is built on top of Emacs. With emacspeak loaded, Emacs
       provides spoken feedback for everything you do. Emacspeak
       currently supports the new Dectalk Express speech synthesizer, as
       well as older versions of the Dectalk e.g. the MultiVoice. See the
       Emacspeak WWW page, the Emacspeak FAQ or the Emacspeak
       distribution for additional details.
     * Requirements: Requires GNU FSF Emacs 19 (version 19.23 or later)
       and TCLX 7.3B (Extended TCL) to run Emacspeak.
     * Availability:

        Emacspeak WWW page
                http://www.research.digital.com/CRL/personal/raman/emacsp
                eak/emacspeak.html

        Emacspeak source
                http://www.research.digital.com/CRL/personal/raman/emacsp
                eak/emacspeak.tar.gz

     * Contact: T. V. Raman, [e-mail]



Eurovocs

     * Platform: Various - RS232 hardware connection
     * Description: Eurovocs is a stand-alone text-to-speech synthesizer
       which uses the text-to-speech technology of Lernout and Hauspie
       Speech Products. Available for Dutch, French, German and American
       English with other languages planned for release soon. One
       Eurovocs device can support two different languages. Eurovocs can
       be connected to any computer via a standard serial interface
       (RS232). It supports personal dictionaries, generation of DTMF
       tones, and pronunciation of special character sequences such as
       digit strings, telephone-numbers, date and time indications,
       abbreviations, alphanumeric strings etc.
     * Contact: Technologie & Revalidatie
       Postbus 128, B-9000 Gent, Belgium
       Ph: [phone], Fax: [phone]
       E-mail: [e-mail]
       WWW:
       http://www.elis.rug.ac.be/ELISgroups/speech/research/eurovocs.html



Festival Speech Synthesis System

     * Platform: General Unix (including Solaris (2.4,2.5), SunOS, HPUX,
       SGIs, Linux, Dec Alpha, FreeBSD)
     * Description: Festival is a general multi-lingual speech synthesis
       system developed at CSTR, University of Edinburgh. It offers a
       full text to speech system with various APIs, as well an
       environment for development and research of speech synthesis
       techniques. It is written in C++ with a Scheme-based command
       interpreter for general control. Festival's home page offers
       demos, the full manual and access to the download page. The
       distribution includes full source and documentation, and lexicons
       and speech databases for British English text to speech.
     * Price: Free for non-commercial use
     * Availability: by anonymous ftp:
       WWW: http://www.cstr.ed.ac.uk/projects/festival/download.html
       ftp: ftp://ftp.cstr.ed.ac.uk/pub/festival/



HADIFIX

     * Platform: Windows
     * Description: German speech synthesis system developed at the
       Institute for Communications Research and Phonetics , University
       of Bonn. Provides conversion of input text to phonemes, automatic
       prediction of stress, phrasing and pitch, and speech generation by
       concatenation of small units of natural speech. Demisyllables and
       similar units are used; they comprise all consonants before the
       vowel and the beginning of the vowel (initial demisyllable) or the
       end of the vowel and the following consonants (final
       demisyllable). For example, the word 'Strolch' is formed by
       concatenating 'Stro' and 'olch'.
     * Demo: Windows demo software available. Limited to synthesis of one
       short text (text.txt) at a time. Speech format limitations too.
       1.3MB file.
       ftp://asl1.ikp.uni-bonn.de/pub/hadifix/hadidemo.zip
       A 1993 version is available with unlimited synthesis from a string
       of phonemic symbols and accent markers. 6MB file.
       ftp://asl1.ikp.uni-bonn.de/pub/hadifix/hadi25.lzh
     * WWW: http://asl1.ikp.uni-bonn.de/~tpo/Hadifix.en.html
     * On-line demo: http://asl1.ikp.uni-bonn.de/~tpo/Hadiq.en.html



Infovox Product Range

     * Description: Multilingual Text-to-speech systems, languages
       available: American English, British English, German, French,
       Spanish, Italian, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Danish and
       Finnish.
     * Product name:INFOVOX 500, PC BOARD
          + Product description: Half length expansion board for IBM PC,
            XT, AT, PS/2 model 30 or compatible personal computers. The
            board can also be connected via the serial port. Language and
            control program for downloading into RAM or mounted on EPROMs
          + Platform: DOS/Windows with IBM PC, XT, AT, PS/2 model 30 or
            compatible
          + Delivered standard interface: MS DOS I/O driver
     * Product name: INFOVOX 600, OEM BOARD
          + Product description: OEM board built with CMOS IC's. Language
            and control program are stored in on-board fixed memory.
          + Platform: any, hardware interface: 9-pole D-SUB (RS 232-C)
            300-9600 Baud.
          + Delivered standard interfaces: MS DOS I/O driver and
            interface to Apple Speech manager.
     * Product name: INFOVOX 700, DESKTOP UNIT
          + Product description: Desktop unit with built in Infovox 600
            to be connected to any computer or terminal via an RS 232-C
            serial interface. Built in loudspeaker and rechargable
            battery for 4 hours use, and control knobs for continuous
            control of speech volume and speed.
          + Platform: various through hardware interface
          + Delivered standard interfaces: MS DOS I/O driver and
            interface to Apple Speech manager
     * Product name: INFOVOX 650, OEM BOARD
          + Product description: OEM-board built with CMOS IC's. Language
            and control program are stored in on-board memory.
          + Platform: any, hardware interface: 9 pole D-SUB (RS 232-C)
            300-9600 Baud
          + Delivered standard interfaces: MS DOS I/O driver and
            interface to Apple Speech manager
     * Product name: INFOVOX 750, DESKTOP UNIT
          + Product description: Desktop unit with built in Infovox 650
            to be connected to any computer or terminal via an RS 232-C
            serial interface. Built in loudspeaker and rechargable
            battery for 5 hours use, and a control knob for continuous
            control of speech volume.
          + Platform: various through hardware interface. Delivered
            standard interfaces include MS DOS I/O driver and interface
            to Apple Speech manager
     * Product name: Infovox 210, software for Apple Macintosh
          + Product description: Software based text-to-speech
            conversion. Produces 16 bit and 8 bit sound. Delivered on
            3.5" diskettes with user lexicon and a complete
            documentation.
          + Platform: Apple Macintosh with minimum 68030, 33 MHz
            microprocessor.
          + Delivered standard interfaces: Standard interface to Apple
            Speech manager
     * Product name: Infovox 220, software for Microsoft Windows.
          + Product description: Software based text-to-speech
            conversion. Produces 16 bit sound and conforms to Microsoft
            Windows multimedia standard MCI. Delivered on 3.5" diskettes
            with user lexicon and a complete documentation.
          + Platform: Windows on IBM compatible PC with minimum 486/25MHz
            microprocessor.
          + Delivered standard interfaces: Standard interface to
            Microsoft Windows 3.1 and sound boards supporting Microsoft
            Windows multimedia driver for audio.
     * Contact: Telia Promotor Infovox AB
       TTS Sales Division
       P.O. Box 2069, S-171 02 Solna, Sweden
       Ph: [phone], Fax: [phone]
       Email: [e-mail]
       WWW: http://www.promotor.telia.se/NYA/cc/t-s/index.html



IPOX: All Prosodic Speech Synthesis Architecture

     * Platform: Windows
     * Description: IPOX is an experimental, all-prosodic speech
       synthesizer, developed by Arthur Dirksen and John Coleman. IPOX is
       freely available (after registration) for evaluation and
       non-profit research purposes.
     * Requirements: PC (preferably a fast 486) running Windows 3.1 or
       higher. Sound output requires a 16-bit Windows-compatible sound
       card
     * Availability: By WWW from
       http://www.tue.nl/ipo/people/adirksen/ipox/ipox.htm



JSRU

     * Platform: UNIX and PC
     * Cost: 100 pounds sterling (from academic institutions and
       industry)
     * Description: A C version of the JSRU system, Version 2.3 is
       available. It's written in Turbo C but runs on most Unix systems
       with very little modification. A Form of Agreement must be signed
       to say that the software is required for research and development
       only.
     * Contact: Dr. E.Lewis [e-mail])_



Klatt-style synthesiser

     * Platform: Unix
     * Cost: Free
     * Description: Software posted to comp.speech in late 1992.
     * Availability: By ftp from the comp.speech ftp site
          +
            ftp://svr-ftp.eng.cam.ac.uk/pub/comp.speech/synthesis/klatt.3.
            04.tar.gz
          +
            ftp://svr-ftp.eng.cam.ac.uk/pub/comp.speech/synthesis/klatt.3.
            04.tar.Z
     * See also: KPE80 - A Klatt Synthesiser and Parameter Editor.



KPE80 - A Klatt Synthesiser and Parameter Editor

     * Platform: Unix
     * Description: The KPE80 program provides a graphical interface for
       the implementation of the Klatt 1980 formant synthesiser written
       by Jon Iles and Nick Ing-Simmons. It was inspired by IGE, a piece
       of code written by Rob Fletcher (
       http://www.york.ac.uk/~rpf1/IGE.html).
     * Technical Desc.: It is comprised of an X-Window interface and
       version 3.03 of the synthesiser code. The interface allows users
       to display and edit Klatt parameters using a graphical display
       which includes the time-amplitude waveform of both the original
       speech and its synthetic copy, and some signal analysis
       facilities. Most of the work in choosing the parameter values to
       produce the synthetic copy has to be done by the user. KPE will
       estimate the fundamental frequency contour from an original token;
       this estimate will need to be amended where errors occur. It is
       possible to specify the formant trajectories with some precision
       by overlaying the appropriate formant frequency parameter tracks
       on the spectrogram of the target waveform. A number of facilities
       exist to help in the refinement of parameter values: original and
       synthetic waveforms can be compared aurally, spectrally, and
       spectrographically using built-in speech analysis facilities.
     * File formats: KPE will read RIFF (.wav) files and SFS files. (SFS
       is a suite of speech-signal processing programs available free
       from Phonetics and Linguistics, UCL.)
     * Availability:

        KPE for SunOs 4.1.3 (statically compiled libraries)
                ftp://pitch.phon.ucl.ac.uk/pub/kpe/kpe80.sun413.tar.Z

        KPE for Linux (statically compiled libraries)
                ftp://pitch.phon.ucl.ac.uk/pub/kpe/kpe80.linux.tar.Z

        The source code (needs gcc and SUIT to compile)
                ftp://pitch.phon.ucl.ac.uk/pub/kpe/kpe80.src.tar.Z

        A postscript overview of KPE
                ftp://pitch.phon.ucl.ac.uk/pub/kpe/OVERVIEW.ps

        The SFS distribution
                ftp://pitch.phon.ucl.ac.uk/pub/sfs/

     * See also: Public domain Klatt-style speech synthesis code.
     * Contact: Andrew Simpson
       Department of Phonetics and Linguistics, University College London

       Wolfson House, 4 Stephenson Way, London NW1 2HE
       Email: [e-mail]
       WWW: http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/andrew/home.html



"learph": Trainable text-to-phoneme software by Antonio Lucca

     * Platform: UNIX
     * Description: Experimental software which learns text to phoneme
       translation from examples using decision-tree-like data
       structures. It is based on the assumption that each letter can
       correspond to different phoneme strings depending on the context.
     * Availability: Examples and source are available on the WWW:
       http://www.silab.dsi.unimi.it/~al367212/ttsdoc.html
     * Contact: Antonio Lucca: [e-mail]



Lernout & Hauspie Text-to-Speech (3 products)

   Lernout & Hauspie have three TTS products. The functionality of the
   products is similar, however, they differ in hardware implementation
   and other details where described below.

     * L&H tts2000/T: TTS for the Telephony and Telecommunications Market
     * L&H tts2000/M: TTS for the Computer and Multimedia Market
     * L&H tts3000/C: TTS for the Buisness and Consumer Electronics
       Market

     * Description: Text to Speech (TTS) software based on parameterized
       segment concatenation (diphones, triphones and tetraphones)
       algorithms. Available for US English, German, Dutch, French,
       Spanish (Castilian), Italian and Korean. General features include:
          + The control of volume, speech rate and speech pitch.
          + The use of control sequences to customize TTS output (adding
            pauses, using phonetic input, etc.).
          + Switching between languages at run time.
          + A personal vocabulary editor is available for building
            exception dictionaries.
          + Readout modes: letter by letter, word by word or sentence by
            sentence.
          + Input formats: orthographic input, phonetic input, phonetic
            input with prosodic information.
     * tts2000/T
          + Output formats: 8 bit mu-law PCM, 8 bit A-law PCM, 16 bit
            linear PCM.
          + Sampling Frequency: 8kHz
          + Single channel platform examples: SHARP SH7000, ARM6/ARM7,
            Intel i960, TI TMS320C31, AT&T DSP3210
          + Multi-channel platform examples: TI TMS320C31, AT&T DSP3210
     * tts2000/M
          + Output formats: 8/16 bit wave format, 8 bit mu-law PCM, 8 bit
            A-law PCM, 16 bit linear PC.
          + Sampling Frequency: 8/10/11.025 kHz
          + Single processor platform examples: ARM6/ARM7, Intel
            386/486/Pentium, Motorola 68040
          + Two processor platform examples: {Intel 386/486/Pentium or
            Motorola 68030} and {ADI ADSP21XX or Motorola 5600X or TI
            TMS320C25/20C5X}
     * tts3000/C
          + Output formats: 8 bit mu-law PCM, 8 bit A-law PCM, 16 bit
            linear PCM.
          + Sampling Frequency: 10kHz
          + Single processor platform examples: SHARP SH7000, ARM6/ARM7,
            Intel i960, TI TMS320C31, AT&T DSP3210
          + Two processors platform examples: { SHARP SH7000 or ARM6/ARM7
            or Intel 386EX or Motorola 683XX} and {ADI ADSP21XX or
            Motorola 5600X or TI TMS320C25/C5X or TI TSP50C10}
     * See also: L&H Windows TTS SDK
     * More Information: on the Lernout & Hauspie WWW pages:
       http://www.lhs.com/tts.html
     * Price: Unknown
     * Contact: Lernout and Hauspie Speech Products
       20 Mall Road, 4th Floor
       Burlington, MA 01803, USA
       Ph: [phone], Fax: [phone]
       Email: [e-mail]
       WWW: http://www.lhs.com/



Lernout & Hauspie Text-to-Speech Windows SDK

     * Platform: Windows
     * Description: The L&H Text-to-Speech software developers kit is
       able to integrate text-to-speech technology with your own or
       existing PC applications under Microsoft Windows 3.1. This
       software will allow conversion of written text into clear human
       sounding synthetic speech.
     * Requirements: IBM-compatible PC 386 DX/33 + 8Mb RAM + MS DOS 5.0 +
       MS Windows 3.1 (or higher) + SoundBlaster compatible sound board.
     * See also: L&H TTS Products
     * More Information: on the Lernout & Hauspie WWW pages:
       http://www.lhs.com/tts.html
     * Price: Unknown
     * Contact: Lernout and Hauspie Speech Products
       20 Mall Road, 4th Floor
       Burlington, MA 01803, USA
       Ph: [phone], Fax: [phone]
       Email: [e-mail]
       WWW: http://www.lhs.com/



Listen2 Text Reader

     * Platform: Windows
     * Description: Listen2 is a multi-voice, multi-language text reader.
       Listen2 comes in two versions, English only that uses high quality
       male and female voices, and the International version that can
       speak up to 5 different languages: English, German, French,
       Spanish or Italian, all in male voices. The basic International
       program comes with built-in English and additional language fonts
       can be purchased separately. The English version comes complete.
       Both programs are dynamically switchable and configurable. This
       means that you can press a hot key to speed up the speech, make it
       louder or quieter, etc., as it is reading a file. You can also
       insert flags in text files to make it switch voices or switch
       languages, depending on what version you have.
       Listen2 has all the features of the JTS Reader shareware program
       plus a few more. It will voice your reminder messages or
       appointment list on start-up. It will also speak a reminder
       message on shutting down.
     * WWW: A more complete description is available on the Listen2 web
       page
     * Contact: Tom Slemko: e-mail: [e-mail], or,
       JTS Micro Consulting Ltd
       10931 Lytton Road, RR#4, Ladysmith, B.C., Canada, V0R 2E0
       WWW: http://www.islandnet.com/jts/



Lucent Technologies Bell Labs Text-to-Speech system

     * Platform: UNIX and Win-95/NT
     * Description:Lucent Technologies provides a web site with demos and
       samples of their latest speech synthesis technology. The site has
       interactive demos in American English, German, and Mandarin
       Chinese, and the capability to adjust voice parameters on the fly.
       Pre-synthesized demos for French, Italian, Russian, and Romanian
       are also provided.
       The site includes downloadable papers with detailed system
       descriptions.
     * WWW: http://www.bell-labs.com/project/tts/



Macintosh Speech Output Applications

     * Platform: Macintosh
     * Description: A comprehensive list of Macintosh Speech Applications
       is provided by Kevin Lenzo at CMU:
       http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~lenzo/mac_speech_apps.html
       The Apple Speech WWW Site also has some useful information:
       http://www.speech.apple.com/



Speech Manager and PlainTalk

     * Platform: Macintosh
     * Description: Apple's text-to-speech system extensions that enable
       applications to perform text-to-speech conversion. The Speech
       Manager runs on most Macs, but PlainTalk (and the high quality
       voices) requires a 68020 Mac or better.
     * Availability: By anonymous ftp from:
       ftp://ftp.support.apple.com/pub/apple_sw_updates/US/Macintosh/Syst
       em/PlainTalk 1.4.1/
       This directory contains subdirectories for recent versions of
       PlainTalk. The current release (PlainTalk 1.4.1) contains the
       English Text-To-Speech with about a dozen voices
       (English_Text-to-Speech.hqx: 5.3 MByte), Mexican Spanish
       (Mexican_Spanish_TTS.hqx: 2.8 MByte), and the English Speech
       Recognition software (English_Speech_Recognition.hqx: 2.3MByte).
     * Cost: Free
     * WWW: The latest information is available from Apple's WWW page for
       speech recognition and synthesis:
       http://www.speech.apple.com/
     * Note 1: Check out Kevin Lenzo's list of Macintosh Speech
       Applications.
     * Note 2: Joshua Baer ([e-mail]) runs a mailing list for
       Plaintalk. For subscription and other information visit the
       Plaintalk Discussion List Home page
     * Contact: Apple Computer, Inc.
       1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, CA 95014, USA
       WWW: http://www.speech.apple.com/
       Email: [e-mail]



MacYack Pro

     * Platform: Macintosh
     * Description: MacYack Pro is a commercial speech package for
       Macintosh that uses the PlainTalk Text-to-Speech synthesis
       software. Features include:
          + Add speech to any word processor.
          + Hear notification dialogs and other dialog boxes.
          + See and hear a customized message at startup or shutdown.
          + Hear calculations instantly.
          + Correct pronounciation errors.
          + Create custom double-clickable "speech files."
          + Have speaking alert sounds.
          + Add speech to HyperCard stacks.
          + Use AppleScript to add speech to other programs.
     * Price: $29.95 for a limited time, reduced from $49.95 regular
       price. 30 days money back guarantee.
     * Contact: Scantron Quality Computers
       20200 Nine Mile Rd. St. Clair Shores, MI 48080
       Ph: 1-800-777-3642, Fax: [phone]
       E-mail: [e-mail]
       WWW: http://www.sqc.com/
       Product Info: http://www.lowtek.com/macyack/



MBROLA: Free Speech Synthesis Project

     * Platform: Sun4, Sun/SunOS5.4, HP, VAX/VMS, DEC Alpha/VMS, PS/DOS,
       PS/Windows 3.1, PS/Windows 95, PC/Solaris2.4, PC/Linux, SGI
       INDY/IRIX, NeXT, and soon for Macintosh.
     * Description: MBROLA is a high-quality, diphone-based speech
       synthesizer which is available for free. It is provided by the
       TCTS Lab of the Faculte Polytechnique de Mons (Belgium) which aims
       to obtain a set a speech synthesizers for as many languages as
       possible which will be free of use for non-commercial,
       non-military applications.
       MBROLA 2.00 takes a list of phonemes as input, together with
       prosodic information (duration of phonemes and a piecewise linear
       description of pitch), and produces 16bit speech samples at the
       sampling frequency of the diphone database (typically 16kHz). (It
       is therefore NOT a Text-To-Speech (TTS) synthesizer, since it does
       not accept raw text as input.) Databases are now being prepared
       for English, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, and Romanian. Collaborations
       are welcome. More information can be found at the MBROLA project
       homepage.
     * Demonstration: WWW demo of MBROLA which compares the quality of
       PSOLA, MBR-PSOLA, LPC, and Hybrid Harmonic/Stochastic
       concatenative synthesizers is available at
       http://tcts.fpms.ac.be/synthesis/modelcmp.html.
     * Contact: Dr Thierry Dutoit
       Faculte Polytechnique de Mons, TCTS Lab,
       31, bvd Dolez, B-7000 Mons, Belgium.
       Ph: [phone], Fax: [phone]
       e-mail: [e-mail]
       WWW: http://tcts.fpms.ac.be/synthesis/mbrola.html



Monologue for Windows from First Byte

     * Platform: Windows
     * Description: Monologue is a software program that reads text from
       the clipboard in Windows 16 or 32 bit applications. It can be
       found as a bundled product with many sound cards and multimedia
       general purpose computer systems. Monologue can add the element of
       speech to virtually any text oriented application. Any
       pronounceable combination of letters and numbers will be spoken
       clearly. It can be applied to tasks such as eyes-free
       proofreading, data verification (e.g. spreadsheets), reading
       E-mail and more. User-changeable parameters provide control over
       the sound quality by allowing for changes in pitch, and the speed
       of speech. An exception dictionary saves preferred pronunciation
       of words and abbreviations.
       Monologue Win32 now includes support for the Microsoft SAPI.
       Monologue male "SpeechFonts" are available for US English, British
       English, German, French, Latin American Spanish, Italian. A US
       English Female SpeechFont is also available.
       For more detailed information and examples go to the First Byte
       WWW pages.
     * Availability: Currently bundled with many sound cards and
       multimedia general purpose computer systems. For pricing,
       licensing details, and release information see the First Byte WWW
       pages or email [e-mail].
     * See also: ProVoice Developer's Speech Toolkit from First Byte
     * Contact: First Byte
       19840 Pioneer Ave., Torrance, CA 90503
       Ph: 310-793-0610 Fax: [phone]
       Email: [e-mail]
       WWW: http://www.firstbyte.davd.com/



Narrator Translator Library

     * Platform: Amiga
     * Description: A US English text to phoneme translator, implemented
       as a resident software library, for use with the Amiga Narrator
       Device. This software was supplied as a standard part of the Amiga
       operating system software up to O.S version 2.04. (Translator
       version 37.1, 1991) Approximately 700 translation rules are used
       to create the 'ARPAbet' phonemes. This software is functional on
       all current Amiga systems (O.S. 3.1).
     * Availability: limited to pre-owned system software disks and
       unsold O.S upgrade kits (Pre-O.S. 2.1).

Replacement Library: Translator42

     * Platform: Amiga
     * Description: an independent replacement for the Commodore-supplied
       "translator.library" which is a part of the Narrator speech
       synthesis package. It implements multi-lingual text-to-speech for
       an Amiga. The translation rules for each language are defined in a
       plain text 'Accent' file.
       There is a provision for the selection of unique languages for
       text segments by inserting in-line markup codes in the text: e.g.
       "Hello there! \french{Bonjour} \deutsch{gute morgen}".
       'Accent' files for American English, British English, Swedish,
       Maori, Finnish, German, Icelandic, Klingon, Polish, Italian, and
       Welsh languages included in the archive.
     * Availability: Amiga The most current version, 42.4, of the library
       and source are available by anonymous ftp from Aminet:
       ftp://ftp.doc.ic.ac.uk/pub/aminet/util/libs/translator42.lha
       ftp://ftp.doc.ic.ac.uk/pub/aminet/dev/src/tran42src.lha



Narrator

     * Platform: Amiga
     * Description: Formant based speech synthesis. Includes a
       Engish-to-phoneme translation library, and a SPEAK: pseudo-device
       for speech output.
     * Hardware: Standard Amiga hardware
     * Availability: Part of AmigaOS
     * See Also: The Narrator Translation library



TextToSpeech Kit

     * Platform: NeXT Computers
     * Description: The TextToSpeech Kit does unrestricted conversion of
       English text to synthesized speech in real-time. The user has
       control over speaking rate, median pitch, stereo balance, volume,
       and intonation type. Text of any length can be spoken, and
       messages can be queued up, from multiple applications if desired.
       Real-time controls such as pause, continue, and erase are
       included. Pronunciations are derived primarily by dictionary
       look-up. The Main Dictionary has nearly 100,000 hand-edited
       pronunciations which can be supplemented or overridden with the
       User and Application dictionaries. A number parser handles numbers
       in any form. A letter-to-sound knowledge base provides
       pronunciations for words not in the Main or customized
       dictionaries. Dictionary search order is under user control.
       Special modes of text input are available for spelling and
       emphasis of words or phrases. The actual conversion of text to
       speech is done by the TextToSpeech Server. The Server runs as an
       independent task in the background, and can handle up to 50 client
       connections.
     * Misc: The TextToSpeech Kit comes in two packages: the Developer
       Kit and the User Kit. The Developer Kit enables developers to
       build and test applications which incorporate text-to-speech. It
       includes the TextToSpeech Server, the TextToSpeech Object, the
       pronunciation editor PrEditor, several example applications,
       phonetic fonts, example source code, and developer documentation.
       The User Kit provides support for applications which incorporate
       text-to-speech. It is a subset of the Developer Kit.
     * Hardware: Uses standard NeXT Computer hardware.
     * Cost:
          + TextToSpeech User Kit: $175 CDN ($145 US)
          + TextToSpeech Developer Kit: $350 CDN ($290 US)
          + Upgrade from User to Developer Kit: $175 CDN ($145 US)
     * Availability: Trillium Sound Research

    1500, 112 - 4th Ave. S.W., Calgary, Alberta, Canada, T2P 0H3
    Tel: [phone] Fax: [phone]
    Order Desk: 1-800-L-ORATOR (US and Canada only)
    Email: [e-mail]



Orator Text-to-Speech Synthesizer

     * Platform: SUN SPARC, Decstation 5000. Written in C, and therefore
       portable to other UNIX platforms. Some successful ports: HP,
       RS-6000, PC-Unix [Linux].
     * Description: Sophisticated speech synthesis package. Has text
       preprocessing (for abbreviations, numbers), acronym rules, and
       human-like spelling routines. Natural-sounding synthesis based on
       demisyllable concatenation. Has high accuracy for pronunciation of
       names of people, places and businesses in America; good accuracy
       for English text; rules for stress and intonation marking; various
       methods of user control and customization at most stages of
       processing.
       A new version of the ORATOR system is under development. Both
       ORATOR and this new "ORATOR II" system are capable of general text
       synthesis. The ORATOR II system has a more natural-sounding voice.
     * Hardware: Runs on common SPARC or Decstation workstations, using
       their internal audio output capability. Recommend at least 16M of
       memory.
     * WWW: More detailed information plus examples of ORATOR synthesis
       are available on the ORATOR WWW pages:
       http://www.bellcore.com/ORATOR/
     * Misc 1: A free demo cassette is available.
     * Misc 2: Examples of Orator are also available on the University of
       Birmingham Speech Synthesis "Museum" WWW site (see Q5.4).
     * Availability and Pricing: Contact Bellcore's Licensing Office
       Tel: [phone]-CORE (521-2673)
       Fax: [phone]
       Email: Anthony Lindsey: [e-mail]
       WWW: http://www.bellcore.com/ORATOR/



PAM - A Text-To-Speech Application

     * Platform: Windows
     * Description: PAM is a talking personal assistant and text reader
       application. It uses the ProVoice TTS package. PAM will verbally
       advise about appointments and reminder messages at specified times
       during the day. It can read text files, clipboard text, and text
       sent in DDE messages. Using the full verbal interface, PAM can be
       used by visually challenged individuals. Shareware - thirty day
       free trial.
     * Requirements: Any Windows sound card, speakers or headphones. Min.
       memory - 4 megs, 8 megs recommended.
     * WWW: A more complete description is available on the JTS homepage:
       http://www.islandnet.com/~tslemko/
     * Availability: The shareware can be downloaded by ftp from
       ftp://ftp.islandnet.com/jts/pam_en3c.zip. The file size is approx.
       1 MByte.
     * Price: $US40 for the registered version.
     * Contact: Tom Slemko: e-mail: [e-mail], or,
       JTS Micro Consulting Ltd
       10931 Lytton Road, RR#4, Ladysmith, B.C., Canada, V0R 2E0



ProVerbe Speech Engine from ELAN Informatique

     * Platform: Windows 3.x, NT, 95, OS/2, Unix Solaris, Unix SCO and
       hardware
     * Description: The ProVerbe Speech Engine from ELAN Informatique
       produces natural sounding speech from written text. Naturalness is
       achieved by using the TD-PSOLA process from the CNET (France
       telecom's research lab.) which is based on the concatenation of
       elementary speech units (including diphones). Supported languages
       are British English, American English, Russian, German, French and
       Spanish. For multi-channel applications Elan Informatique also
       provides hardware platforms.
       Elan Informatique provides a SDK reference document (sdken.doc:
       WinWord6 format).
     * Demo versions: Telephone demonstration: [phone]
       Sample sound files and demonstration software available.
       A CD-ROM with all these demonstrations is available by
       registration.
     * Contact: Elan Informatique
       4 rue Jean Rodier, 31400 TOULOUSE FRANCE
       Contact person: Pierre Delrat
       Phone: [phone] Fax: [phone]
       BBS: [phone]
       E-mail: [e-mail]
       ftp: ftp://ftp.elan.fr
       WWW: http://www.elan.fr/



ProVoice Developer's Speech Toolkit from First Byte

     * Platform: ProVoice Developer's Toolkits are available for DOS,
       Windows 3.1, Windows 95, Windows NT, OS/2, and Macintosh.
     * Description: ProVoice allows programmers to add synthesized speech
       to their applications. Your program passes text strings to the
       ProVoice speech engine that translates text into audible speech.
       Male and/or female "SpeechFonts" are available for many languages;
       English, French, German, UK British English, Italian, and Spanish.

       ProVoice converts text to speech in two phases using a set of
       phonetic translation and pronunciation rules. First, the software
       analyzes and translates text into "sound descriptors", a phonetic
       language with pitch, duration, and amplitude codes which are
       needed to produce stress patterns in phrases and sentences. Rules
       are used to analyze words, numbers, and punctuation. The second
       phase converts the intermediate phonetic language in speech
       signals; algorithms drive distinct speech signals into smooth
       flowing, continuous, clear speech. Real time synchronization of
       mouth movement and word boundaries allows animation of a graphical
       talking character, or highlighting of displayed text as it is
       spoken.
       Necessary tools and examples are provided for programmers to
       manipulate the ProVoice speech technology; including installation
       instructions, extensive samples programs, and complete
       documentation. In addition, sample code is provided on disk to
       illustrate speech programming techniques.
     * Note 1: First Byte will perform custom work for embedded systems.
     * Note 2: ProVoice Windows includes support for the Microsoft SAPI.
       It will speak through any Windows-supported wave audio device.
     * Note 3: Distribution of ProVoice for commercial use is subject to
       execution of a Commercial Product Distribution License Agreement.
     * WWW: For more detailed information and examples go to the First
       Byte WWW page: http://www.firstbyte.davd.com/
     * See also: Monologue for Windows from First Byte
     * Price and Availability: Contact First Byte
     * Contact: First Byte
       19840 Pioneer Ave., Torrance, CA 90503
       Ph: 310-793-0610, Fax: [phone]
       Email: [e-mail]
       WWW: http://www.firstbyte.davd.com/



RC Systems V8600/V8601 Text to Speech synthesizers

     * Platform 1: IBM PC: ISA card.
     * Platform 2: Interface to PC/104 standard microcontrollers.
     * Platform 3: Standalone (or embedded) hardware thru RS232 or
       parallel printer port or processor bus.
     * Description: Converts plain ASCII text to speech. Programmable
       voices, pitch rate, volume, etc. Built-in DTMF and tone
       generators.
     * Price: $151-$299 US (qty 1)
     * Contact: RC Systems

    1609 England Avenue, Everett, WA 98203, USA
    Ph: [phone] Fax: [phone]
    Europe: [phone]



rsynth

     * Platform: Various (including Solaris2.3, SunOS4.1.3, HPUX, SGI
       Irix4.x, Linux)
     * Description: Public domain text-to-speech systm assembled from a
       variety of sources. It supports CMU and BEEP format dictionaries
       (as described in Q1.10) and now utilises stress marks in the
       dictionary in synthesising intonation.
     * Price: Free
     * Misc: Axel Belinfante has implemented a WWW rsynth demo:
       http://wwwtios.cs.utwente.nl/say.
     * Availability: by anonymous ftp from

                ftp://svr-ftp.eng.cam.ac.uk/pub/comp.speech/synthesis/rsy
                nth-2.0.tar.Z

                ftp://svr-ftp.eng.cam.ac.uk/pub/comp.speech/synthesis/rsy
                nth-2.0.tar.gz



SENSYN speech synthesizer

     * Platform: PC/DOS/Windows, Macintosh, Sun, and NeXT
     * Rough Cost: $300
     * Description: This formant synthesizer produces speech waveform
       files based on the (Klatt) KLSYN88 synthesizer. It is intended for
       laboratory and research use. Note that this is NOT a
       text-to-speech synthesizer, but creates speech sounds based upon a
       large number of input variables (formant frequencies, bandwidths,
       glottal pulse characteristics, etc.) and would be used as part of
       a TTS system. Includes full source code.
     * Availability: Sensimetrics Corporation
       Sidney Street, Cambridge MA 02139.
       Fax: [phone]; Tel: [phone].
       Email: [e-mail]
       WWW: http://www.sens.com/



SGI Developers Toolbox Synthesiser

     * Platform: SGI
     * Description: The SGI Developer Toolbox 4.0 CDROM contains a
       basicpublic domain text-to-speech program in the publics/speak
       directory. The directory includes man pages and source.
     * Availability: on the SGI Developer Toolbox 4.0 CDROM



SIMTEL

   A wide range of speech related software, sound-blaster software and
   signal processing software for PCs is available on SimTel and its
   mirror sites. It can be obtained by ftp from:

          ftp://ftp.coast.net/SimTel/msdos/voice/

   and is now on the WWW:

          http://www.acs.oakland.edu/oak/SimTel/win3/sound.html

    Voicemaker

   The archives include the program Voicemaker which synthesises speech
   from phonemes using "concatenation" of phonemes recorded by the user.
   Voicemaker is a freeware program. It requires an IBM or compatible,
   512KB RAM, sound blaster compatible sound card.

          ftp://ftp.coast.net/SimTel/msdos/voice/vm110.zip



Sound Bytes DeveloperUs Kit

     * Platform: Subroutine library for Windows, OS/2 and Macintosh
     * Hardware: Windows - 16 MHz 80386 (minimum) running Windows 3.1; 4
       Mb RAM with at least 1.4 Mb RAM free. Disk space 1.4 Mb.
       OS/2 - 16 MHz 80386 (minimum) running OS/2 2.0 or above; 8 Mb RAM
       with at least 1.4 Mb RAM free.
       Mac - Any Mac with at least 2.5 Mb of RAM running 6.0.4 or higher.
       Telephone compatible. Compatible with commonly used sound cards.
     * Description: SBDK is a software-only sentence-level synthesizer
       that converts unrestricted English text (ASCII) into synthesized
       voice through diphone concatenation. SBDK utlizes parsing to
       incorporate the intonational and rhythmic patterns of normal
       speech. The developerUs kit includes two voices, one female and
       one male. The product has a 55,000-word built-in dictionary and a
       tool for creating customized user dictionaries. It converts
       numbers, dates, dollars, phone numbers and times to words, and has
       a SoundOut facility that provides a choice of pronouncing unknown
       words phonetically or spelling them out. Developers can vary voice
       pitch (130-220 Hz) and rate (65-200 wpm), synchronize speech to
       other events, have multiple channels of speech to the same or
       different boards, etc. Speech sampling options: 8-bit linear;
       8-bit companded at 11 kHz (Windows); 8-bit mu-law PCM at 8 or 11
       kHz; 16-bit linear at 11 kHz.
     * Cost: Sound Bytes may be licensed for internal use or resale. Site
       license fee= $3750. Resale or Internal runtime fees= 2% of net
       sales price per runtime sold, OR $150 per telephone port, OR per
       unit pricing for internal use determined case-by-case.
     * Misc: Demo disks are available for Windows and the Mac.
     * Availability: Natural Speech Technologies, Inc.
       Ph: [phone].



spchsyn.exe

     * Platform: DOS
     * Availability: By anonymous ftp as a self extracting DOS archive.
       ftp://evans.ee.adfa.oz.au/mirrors/tibbs/applications/spchsyn.exe
     * Requirements: May require special TI product(s), but all source is
       there.



"Speak" - a Text to Speech Program

     * Platform: Sun SPARC
     * Description: Text to speech program based on concatenation of
       pre-recorded speech segments. A function library can be used to
       integrate speech output into other code.
     * Hardware: SPARC audio I/O
     * Availability: by anonymous ftp
       ftp://wilma.cs.brown.edu/pub/speak.tar.Z



Speech Manager and PlainTalk

     * Platform: Macintosh
     * Description: Apple's text-to-speech system extensions that enable
       applications to perform text-to-speech conversion. The Speech
       Manager runs on most Macs, but PlainTalk (and the high quality
       voices) requires a 68020 Mac or better.
     * Availability: By anonymous ftp from:
       ftp://ftp.support.apple.com/pub/apple_sw_updates/US/Macintosh/Syst
       em/PlainTalk 1.4.1/
       This directory contains subdirectories for recent versions of
       PlainTalk. The current release (PlainTalk 1.4.1) contains the
       English Text-To-Speech with about a dozen voices
       (English_Text-to-Speech.hqx: 5.3 MByte), Mexican Spanish
       (Mexican_Spanish_TTS.hqx: 2.8 MByte), and the English Speech
       Recognition software (English_Speech_Recognition.hqx: 2.3MByte).
     * Cost: Free
     * WWW: The latest information is available from Apple's WWW page for
       speech recognition and synthesis:
       http://www.speech.apple.com/
     * Note 1: Check out Kevin Lenzo's list of Macintosh Speech
       Applications.
     * Note 2: Joshua Baer ([e-mail]) runs a mailing list for
       Plaintalk. For subscription and other information visit the
       Plaintalk Discussion List Home page
     * Contact: Apple Computer, Inc.
       1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, CA 95014, USA
       WWW: http://www.speech.apple.com/
       Email: [e-mail]



Text to phoneme program (1)

     * Platform: unknown
     * Description: Text to phoneme program. Based on Naval Research
       Lab's set of text to phoneme rules.
     * Availability: by anonymous ftp
       ftp://shark.cse.fau.edu/pub/src/phon.tar.Z



Text to phoneme program (2)

     * Platform: unknown
     * Description: Text to phoneme program.
     * Availability: by anonymous ftp
       ftp://ftp.doc.ic.ac.uk/packages/unix-c/utils/phoneme.c.gz



Text to phoneme program (3)

     * Description: A public domain version of the same Naval Research
       Lab text to phoneme rules.
     * Availability: By anonymous ftp
       ftp://svr-ftp.eng.cam.ac.uk/pub/comp.speech/synthesis/english2phon
       eme.tar.gz



Tinytalk

     * Platform: DOS / Windows???
     * Description: Shareware package is a speech 'screen reader' which
       is used by many blind users.
     * Price: Tinytalk is now $150. There are package deals on Tinytalk
       with various speech synthesizers.
     * Availability: Tinytalk is available by anonymous ftp from the
       following site

        Files: ttexe167.zip and ttdoc167.zip (executable and
                documenation)
                ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/eb/ebohlman/

       (Note: it is a busy ftp server.)
     * Contact: Eric Bohlman

    OMS Development
    610-B Forest Ave., Wilmette, IL 60091
    Ph: [phone] Fax: [phone]
    Outside North America: (708)-251-5787
    Email: [e-mail]



TrueTalk

     * Platform: Sun Sparcstation 1+/2/LX/5/10/20 with SunOS 4.1.3, or
       SGI Indy/Indigo/Indigo2 with IRIX 5.2. More platforms in
       development.
     * Description: Personal TrueTalk, by Entropic Research Laboratory,
       Inc., is an all-software Text-to-Speech (TTS) system designed to
       voice-enable UNIX X-Windows workstations. It combines a graphical
       interface with a powerful TTS engine based on technology developed
       by AT&T Bell Laboratories. Features include:
          + Intelligible, prosodically natural speech.
          + Text taken from file input, highlighted X selections, the
            interface scratch pad, other programs connected through a
            TCP/IP socket, or Tcl/Tk applications via the Tk "send"
            mechanism.
          + Stop, pause and resume while speech is in progress.
          + Visual indication of corresponding text position when paused.
          + Nine speaking voices, with Male and Female versions of each
            voice.
          + Adjustable speaking rate and volume.
          + Supports drop-in text filters; "email" and "lively" examples
            included.
          + Audio output through workstation headphones or speaker.
          + Complete on-line documentation, including mouse-activated
            help windows.
     * Misc: A more detailed description of TrueTalk is available on the
       Entropic WWW server: http://www.entropic.com/truetalk.com
     * Availability: You can obtain Personal TrueTalk through the
       Internet. For details, see

                ftp://ftp.entropic.com/pub/truetalk/README.ptt

       Personal TrueTalk is available free of charge for evaluation
       purposes. You can fully-enable your evaluation copy at any time by
       purchasing a license key from Entropic.
     * Requirements: 12MB disk space, 8MB process size (24MB system RAM
       recommended).
     * Cost: US$495; US$395 academic
     * Contact: Entropic Research Laboratory, Inc.,
       Washington, D.C.
       Voice: 1-800-ENTROPIC (North America), [phone]
       Fax: [phone]
       Email: [e-mail]
       WWW: http://www.entropic.com/



TruVoice from Centigram

     * Platform: Windows-NT, Windows 95, Windows 3.1 (limited release),
       Sun Solaris 2.x
     * Description: TruVoice., an advanced text-to-speech converter, is
       available for multiple environments. TruVoice converts text into
       spoken language. TruVoice adds intelligible, natural-sounding
       speech to sound enabled platforms.
          + Small, 1.5MB, memory footprint
          + Advanced text pre-processing
          + No vocabulary restrictions
          + User-definable pronunciation dictionary
          + Accurately pronounces surnames and place names
          + Preprocessor provides e-mail and spreadsheet reading
            capabilities and expands abbreviations.
          + Multiple languages available: American English, Latin
            American Spanish, German, French, Italian
          + Flexible pitch, volume and speech rate
          + Intonation support for punctuation
          + Supports navigational capabilities such as, pause, resume and
            jump forward / jump back with sentence or word boundaries
       More detailed information is provided in the brochure page on the
       Centigram WWW site.
       A demonstration of TruVoice is available on the Centigram WWW
       pages.
     * Cost:
          + Windows versions are $495 for the SDK
          + Solaris versions are $995
          + Contact Centigram for other pricing.
     * Contact: TruVoice Sales
       Centigram Communications Corporation
       91 East Tasman Drive, San Jose, CA 95134
       Ph: [phone] Fax: [phone]
       Demo: 800-746 1632
       Email: [e-mail]
       WWW: http://www.centigram.com/



WinSpeech

     * Platform: Windows
     * Description: WinSpeech is a text-to-speech application that reads
       text and produces speech to the audio output. Features basic text
       editing tools, talk from editing window, DDE server allows other
       Windows applications to send text for talking, coach mode for
       providing audio instructions throughout the program, dictionary
       editing tools for customizing pronunciation.
       WSPLIB text-to-speech DLL is a speech functions library for
       developers. More information available by email.
     * Requirements: System requirements: IBM PC or compatible computer
       with Windows 3.1 or higher. Sound card is recommended but not
       required.
     * Availability: Freeware available through the PC WholeWare WWW
       page.
     * Contact: PC WholeWare
       33 Justin Street, Lexington, MA 02173, U.S.A.
       Email: [e-mail]
       WWW: http://www.pcww.com/index.html



WreadFiles: File reader for Commodore Amiga

     * Platform: Commodore Amiga
     * Description: WreadFiles is a vocal text file reader program for
       use on the Commodore Amiga. The text is printed to the screen and
       spoken. Features include:
          + Text is read in sentences rather than lines.
          + Dynamic Speech Correction on over 4000 word or word
            fragments.
          + Pronunciations for many place names, personal names, foreign
            names, foreign expressions and abbreviations.
          + Run from Workbench or CLI.
          + Used with A1000 (OS 1.3), A3000 (OS 2.04-2.1), and A4000 (OS
            3.0)
     * Requirements: Standard Amiga Translator.library and
       Narrator.device required. 2.04 versions recommended. 1 Meg or more
       ram recommended. External speakers required.
     * Availability: No fee requested for non-commercial use. From:
          + GEnie: Page 555,3 File Number 24627
          + Aminet
            ftp://ftp.wustl.edu/pub/aminet/util/misc/WreadFiles47.lha
     * Contact: Written by Michael L. Barlow
       Email: [e-mail] or [e-mail] or
       [e-mail]



ZMD Speech Synthesis

  "Speaky" Speech Synthesis from ZMD

     * Platform: DSP solution for platform independent speech synthesis
       implementation
     * Description: "Speaky" provides German speech synthesis system in a
       DSP solution. It includes pre-processing of input ASCII text with
       unlimited vocabulary, both parametric and non-parametric speech
       synthesis algorithms, and prosody modelling. More detailed
       information and audio samples can be found at the ZMD WWW Site.
     * Contact: Zentrum Mikroelektronik Dresden GmbH
       Grenzstrasse 28, D-01109 Dresden, Germany
       Ph: [phone], Fax: [phone]
       Email: [e-mail]
       WWW: http://www.zmd-gmbh.de/

  ZMD PCMCIA Speech Synthesis Card

     * Platform: MS-DOS, Windows
     * Description: Complete text-to-speech synthesis system for the
       German language with unlimited vocabulary using VOICE Processor
       "Speaky". The required pre-processing of the input ASCII text is
       performed by a software programm that is downloaded automatically
       from the PCMCIA Speech Synthesis Card during the card's
       initialising routine. Headphone or active loudspeaker can be
       connected directly for signal output. More detailed information
       and audio samples can be found at the ZMD WWW Site.
     * Requirements: PC Card slot, Card & Socket Services Software
     * Contact: Zentrum Mikroelektronik Dresden GmbH
       Grenzstrasse 28, D-01109 Dresden, Germany
       Ph: [phone], Fax: [phone]
       Email: [e-mail]
       WWW: http://www.zmd-gmbh.de/


___________________________________________________________________________

                             Speech Recognition

                         comp.speech FAQ Section 6

          * SpeechLinks: Speech Recognition
          * Q6.1: What is speech recognition?
          * Q6.2: How is speech recognition performed?
          * Q6.3: How can I build a simple speech recogniser?
          * Q6.4: References & books on speech recognition
          * Q6.5: Speech Recognition Hardware/Software
          * Q6.6: Speaker Recognition (Verification and Identification)
          * Q6.7: Integrated Speech Products


___________________________________________________________________________

                   Q6.1: What is speech recognition?

Automatic Speech Recognition

   Automatic speech recognition is the process by which a computer maps
   an acoustic speech signal to text.

   Automatic speech understanding is the process by which a computer maps
   an acoustic speech signal to some form of abstract meaning of the
   speech.

What does speaker dependent / adaptive / independent mean?

   A speaker dependent system is developed to operate for a single
   speaker. These systems are usually easier to develop, cheaper to buy
   and more accurate, but not as flexible as speaker adaptive or speaker
   independent systems.

   A speaker independent system is developed to operate for any speaker
   of a particular type (e.g. American English). These systems are the
   most difficult to develop, most expensive and accuracy is lower than
   speaker dependent systems. However, they are more flexible.

   A speaker adaptive system is developed to adapt its operation to the
   characteristics of new speakers. It's difficulty lies somewhere
   between speaker independent and speaker dependent systems.

What does small/medium/large/very-large vocabulary mean?

   The size of vocabulary of a speech recognition system affects the
   complexity, processing requirements and the accuracy of the system.
   Some applications only require a few words (e.g. numbers only), others
   require very large dictionaries (e.g. dictation machines). There are
   no established definitions, however, try

     * small vocabulary - tens of words
     * medium vocabulary - hundreds of words
     * large vocabulary - thousands of words
     * very-large vocabulary - tens of thousands of words.

What does continuous speech or isolated-word mean?

   An isolated-word system operates on single words at a time - requiring
   a pause between saying each word. This is the simplest form of
   recognition to perform because the end points are easier to find and
   the pronunciation of a word tends not affect others. Thus, because the
   occurrences of words are more consistent they are easier to recognise.

   A continuous speech system operates on speech in which words are
   connected together, i.e. not separated by pauses. Continuous speech is
   more difficult to handle because of a variety of effects. First, it is
   difficult to find the start and end points of words. Another problem
   is "coarticulation". The production of each phoneme is affected by the
   production of surrounding phonemes, and similarly the the start and
   end of words are affected by the preceding and following words. The
   recognition of continuous speech is also affected by the rate of
   speech (fast speech tends to be harder).


___________________________________________________________________________

               Q6.2: How is speech recognition performed?

   A wide variety of techniques are used to perform speech recognition.
   There are many types of speech recognition. There are many levels of
   speech recognition / analysis / understanding.

   Typically speech recognition starts with the digital sampling of
   speech. The next stage is acoustic signal processing. Most techniques
   include spectral analysis; e.g. LPC analysis (Linear Predictive
   Coding), MFCC (Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficients), cochlea modelling
   and many more.

   The next stage is recognition of phonemes, groups of phonemes and
   words. This stage can be achieved by many processes such as DTW
   (Dynamic Time Warping), HMM (hidden Markov modelling), NNs (Neural
   Networks), expert systems and combinations of techniques. HMM-based
   systems are currently the most commonly used and most successful
   approach.

   Most systems utilise some knowledge of the language to aid the
   recognition process.

   Some systems try to "understand" speech. That is, they try to convert
   the words into a representation of what the speaker intended to mean
   or achieve by what they said.


___________________________________________________________________________

           Q6.3: How can I build a simple speech recogniser?

    QUICKY RECOGNIZER sketch:

   Doug Danforth provides a detailed account in article 253 in the
   comp.speech archives. A summary is provided below. It is also
   available by anonymous ftp

          ftp://svr-ftp.eng.cam.ac.uk/pub/comp.speech/info/DIY_SpeechReco
          gnition

   This is a simple recognizer that should give you 85%+ recognition
   accuracy. The accuracy is a function of the words you have in your
   vocabulary. Long distinct words are easy. Short similar words are
   hard. You can get 98+% on the digits with this recognizer.

   Overview:

     * Find the begining and end of the utterance.
     * Filter the raw signal into frequency bands.
     * Cut the utterance into a fixed number of segments.
     * Average data for each band in each segment.
     * Store this pattern with its name.
     * Collect training set of about 3 repetitions of each pattern
       (word).
     * Recognize unknown by comparing its pattern against all patterns in
       the training set and returning the name of the pattern closest to
       the unknown.

   Many variations upon the theme can be made to improve the performance.
   Try different filtering of the raw signal and different processing
   methods.

    Public Domain Recognition Software

   Q6.5 contains information on public domain speech recognition software
   including: Lotec and Myers' Hidden Markov Model software.

    Discrete Hidden Markov Model Demonstration Software

   Hidden Markov Models (HMMs) are widely used in speech recognition
   systems. Joe Picone has put together some demonstration software for
   basic discrete HMMs including Viterbi and Baum-Welch training and
   evaluation, random sequence generation (generating data from a model),
   and model updating (useful for incremental training). There is a
   simple demo program that supports all of these modes from command line
   arguments. This allows experiments to test the classic coin-toss
   examples commonly described in textbooks. The code closely parallels
   the following textbook:

     * J.R. Deller, Jr., J.G. Proakis, and J.H.L. Hansen, Discrete-Time
       Processing of Speech Signals, MacMillan, 1993, ISBN:
       0-02-328301-7.

   The code is written in C++ and is intended to facilitate learning and
   understanding of the algorithms. The code is available on the ISIP web
   site:
   http://www.isip.msstate.edu/software/

   Lecture notes corresponding to the examples are also available:
   http://www.isip.msstate.edu/publications/1996/speech_recognition_short
   _course


___________________________________________________________________________

             Q6.4: References & books on speech recognition

     * Product Reviews and Comparisons
     * Using Speech Recognition: Health Issues
     * On the WWW
     * Technology: General and Introductory
     * Technical
     * Course Notes
     * Bibliographies and Reference Lists

  Product Reviews and Comparisons

     * "Talk Show", Wayne Rash Jr., PC Magazine (USA), Dec 20, 1994.
     * "Seybold Report on Desktop Publishing" published a nine-page,
       head-to-head comparison of Dragon's DOS software with IBM's OS/2
       software. March 7, 1994; Volume 8, Number 7; Pages 3-11;
       ISSN:0889-9762; Seybold Publications, P.O. Box 644, Media, PA
       19063 USA, phone [phone].
     * McGraw-Hill Inc.'s "BYTE, the Magazine of Technology Integration,"
       published a two-page review of IBM's Personal Dictation System
       software. May 1994; Volume ?, Number ?; Pages 145-146;
       ISSN:0360-5280; Editorial, Executive, and Circulation address: One
       Phoenix Mill Lane, Peterborough, NH 03458 USA, phone ?

  Using Speech Recognition: Health Issues

     * The National Center for Voice and Speech provides some basic
       information on preserving "Vocal Health" on their WWW site:
       http://www.shc.uiowa.edu/hygiene/home.html
     * Voice Users Mailing List: detail in Q1.4.html of the FAQ.
     * Typing Injury FAQ: http://www.cs.princeton.edu:80/~dwallach/tifaq/
       has a range of information on Typing Injuries, avoiding them,
       alternatives and more.
     * Typing Injuries Page:
       http://alumni.caltech.edu/~dank/typing-archive.html has links to
       dozens of useful resources.
     * Voice Problems -- Prevention and Correction: advice on preserving
       your voice with specific hints for using speech recognition.
       ftp://ftp.csua.berkeley.edu/pub/typing-injury/voice-problems
     * " Talking to a PC May Be Hazard To Your Throat", by Julie Chao in
       the Wall Street Journal.
     * " Talking to Computers Has its Hazards", by Gordon Arnaut in The
       Globe and Mail

  On the WWW

     * Survey of the State of the Art in Human Language Technology:
       Report edited by Ronald A. Cole et. al. with a section on Spoken
       Input Technologies.
       http://www.cse.ogi.edu/CSLU/HLTsurvey/ch1node2.html

  Technology: General and Introductory

   Some general introduction books on speech recognition technology:

     * Fundamentals of Speech Recognition; Lawrence Rabiner & Biing-Hwang
       Juang Englewood Cliffs NJ: PTR Prentice Hall (Signal Processing
       Series), c1993, ISBN 0-13-015157-2
     * Speech recognition by machine; W.A. Ainsworth London: Peregrinus
       for the Institution of Electrical Engineers, c1988
     * Speech synthesis and recognition; J.N. Holmes Wokingham: Van
       Nostrand Reinhold, c1988
     * Speech Communication: Human and Machine, Douglas O'Shaughnessy;
       Addison Wesley series in Electrical Engineering: Digital Signal
       Processing, 1987.
     * Electronic speech recognition: techniques, technology and
       applications, edited by Geoff Bristow, London: Collins, 1986
     * Readings in Speech Recognition; edited by Alex Waibel & Kai-Fu
       Lee. San Mateo: Morgan Kaufmann, c1990

  Technical

     * Hidden Markov models for speech recognition; X.D. Huang, Y. Ariki,
       M.A. Jack. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, c1990
     * Speech Recognition: The Complete Practical Reference Guide; T.
       Schalk, P. J. Foster: Telecom Library Inc, New York; ISBN
       O-9366648-39-2; 377 pages; paperback only. Covers speech
       recognition in a telephony environment and wish to use call
       processing hardware based in PCs. It is written using Dialogic
       hardware as the example for the hardware.
     * Automatic speech recognition: the development of the SPHINX
       system; by Kai-Fu Lee; Boston; London: Kluwer Academic, c1989
     * An Introduction to the Application of the Theory of Probabilistic
       Functions of a Markov Process to Automatic Speech Recognition, S.
       E. Levinson, L. R. Rabiner and M. M. Sondhi; in Bell Syst. Tech.
       Jnl. v62(4), pp1035--1074, April 1983
     * Review of Neural Networks for Speech Recognition, R. P. Lippmann;
       in Neural Computation, v1(1), pp 1-38, 1989.
     * Automatic Speech and Speaker Recognition: Advanced Topics, C.H.
       Lee, F.K. Soong and K.K. Paliwal (Eds.), Kluwer, Boston, 1996.

  Course Notes

     * Joseph Picone of the Institute for Signal and Information
       Processing (ISIP) at Mississippi State University has put the
       course notes for "Fundamentals of Speech Recognition" on the WWW.
       The course covers background probability and phonetics/acoustics,
       speech signal analysis, dynamic programming, dynamic time warping,
       hidden Markov modelling, language modelling, neural networks, etc.
       The WWW sites provides the syllabus and lecture notes.
       WWW: http://www.isip.msstate.edu/publications/1996/ee_8993/

  Bibliographies and Reference Lists

     * WWW searchable online-bibiliography for Phonetics and Speech
       Technology with more than 8000 entries. Provided by Institut fur
       Phonetik at Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universitat Frankfurt.
       http://www.uni-frankfurt.de/~ifb/bib_engl.html
     * Computational Speech Processing: Speech Analysis, Recognition,
       Understanding, Compression, Transmission, Coding, Synthesis ; Text
       to Speech Systems, Speech to Tactile Displays, Speaker
       Identification, Prosody Processing : BIBLIOGRAPHY, by Conrad F.
       Sabourin, 1994, 2 volumes, 1187p, ISBN 2-921173-21-2, INFOLINGUA
       inc., P.O. Box 187 Snowdon, Montreal, H3X 3T4, Canada.
       See also: http://gomer.mlink.net/infolingua.html


___________________________________________________________________________

             Q6.5: Speech Recognition Hardware and Software

   The number of speech recognition packages, and the information about
   the software is changing rapidly. Any help with keeping this
   information up to date will be appreciated.

     * Products in the FAQ
     * Speech Recognition Processors (ICs)
     * Recognition Information on the WWW
     * Speech Recognition Resellers and Value-Add

  In the FAQ:

   The following speech recognition software/hardware is described in the
   comp.speech FAQ.

   _Apple Macintosh_
          * Digital Dreams Speech Recognition Plug-Ins
          * Dragon Dictation Products
          * Macintosh Speech Recognition Manager
          * PowerSecretary

   _Windows (including 95, NT, 3.1)_
          * AT&T Watson Speech Recognition
          * Cambridge Voice for Windows
          * CustomVoice and CustomTelephone: A&G Graphics Interface Inc.
          * DragonDictate for Windows
          * Dragon Dictation Products
          * Dragon Developer Tools
          * Ficomp Interpreter 6000
          * IBM VoiceType Dictation and Control
          * IN CUBE
          * Kurzweil Speech Recognition (2 products)
          * Lernout & Hauspie ASR SDK
          * Listen for Windows 2.0 from Verbex Voice Systems
          * Microsoft Speech Recognition
          * NCC Dictate
          * Phonetic Engine 500 (PE500) from Speech Systems, Inc.
          * Philips Speech Recognition (2 products)
          * ProNotes Voice Tools
          * PureSpeech
          * smARTspeak from Advanced Recognition Technologies, Inc.
          * Visual Voice from Stylus Innovation
          * VoiceAssist for Windows from Creative Labs, Inc.
          * VoiceServer for Windows
          * Whisper
          * WildCard Speech Products

   _DOS_
          * DATAVOX - French
          * Dragon Developer Tools
          * Ficomp Interpreter 6000
          * Jialong He's Speech Recognition Research Tool
          * smARTspeak from Advanced Recognition Technologies, Inc.
          * Votan VPC2100 Voice Card and VSP 1010 Speech Processor

   _OS/2_
          * IBM VoiceType Dictation and Control

   _Unix_
          * AbbotDemo
          * BBN Hark Telephony Recognizer
          * EARS: Single Word Recognition Package
          * Ficomp Interpreter 6000
          * Hidden Markov Model Toolkit (HTK) from Entropic
          * IN CUBE
          * Jialong He's Speech Recognition Research Tool
          * Lotec Speech Recognition Package
          * Myers' Hidden Markov Model software
          * NICO Artificial Neural Network Toolkit
          * Nuance Speech Recognition System
          * PureSpeech
          * recnet

   _Integrated Circuits and Dedicated Hardware_
          * HM2007 - Speech Recognition Chip
          * OKI VRP6679 - Speech Recognition Chip
          * Sensory Inc. Integrated Circuits
          * Speech Commander - Verbex Voice Systems
          * Voice Control Systems Recognition
          * VCS 2030 & 2060 Voice Dialer

   _Other Platforms_
          * Simon Says (NeXT)
          * Voice Command Line Interface (Amiga)
          * Visus SpeechKit

   _Unknown_
          * Berkeley Restaurant Project (BeRP)
          * Lernout & Hauspie ASR (3 products)
          * Voice-Trek 2.0
          * Voicetek Corp.
          * Voice Processing Corporation Speech Recognition Product Line

  Speech Recognition Processors (ICs)

   Jean-Pierre Lereboullet has put together a detailed list of Voice
   Recognition Processors which covers about 15 ICs and pieces of related
   hardware (including D6106, HM2007, MSM6679, RSC-164, TC8860F/64F/65F,
   5A128).
   The document is available on the comp.speech ftp server:
   ftp://svr-ftp.eng.cam.ac.uk/pub/comp.speech/info/VoiceRecognitionProce
   ssors

  Recognition Information on the WWW

   In addition to the entries on speech recognition in this FAQ, the
   following WWW sites provide information on speech recognition:

    Commercial Speech Recognition: Russ Wilcox of PureSpeech Inc.

          http://www.tiac.net/users/rwilcox/speech.html

    Macintosh Speech Resources and Apps
          http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~lenzo/mac_speech_apps.html

    Speech Recognition Information: 21st Century Eloquence
          http://www.voicerecognition.com/

    Applied Speech Technology Laboratory of CLSI at Stanford
          http://csli-www.stanford.edu/users/bscott/SRTech.html

    Speech Toys Speech Recognition Page
          http://www.speechtoys.com/spchtoys/sprec.html

    Speech recognition product lists: postings to comp.speech
          ftp://svr-ftp.eng.cam.ac.uk/pub/comp.speech/info/SpeechRecognit
          ionProducts

    Search Alta Vista for Speech Recognition

    Search Lycos for Speech Recognition

    Yahoo pages on Speech Recognition
          http://www.yahoo.com/business/corporations/computers/software/v
          oice_recognition/
          http://www.yahoo.com/Science/Computer_Science/Artificial_Intell
          igence/Natural_Language_Processing/Speech_Recognition/

  Speech Recognition Resellers and Value-Added Services

    1stVoice
          2470 El Camino Real, Suite 110, Palo Alto CA 94306-1701
          Ph: 415-857-1320, Fax: [phone]
          WWW: http://www.1stvoice.com/
          Email: [e-mail]
          Dragon Dictation Products

    21st Century Eloquence
          325-A Royal Poinciana Plaza, Palm Beach, Florida 33480, USA
          Ph: 800-245-2133, Fax: [phone]
          WWW: http://www.voicerecognition.com/
          Kurzweil, IBM VoiceType, Dragon, Kolvox

    Auscript (Australia)
          Suite 2, Level 3, 60-70 Elizabeth St, Sydney, NSW 2000,
          Australia
          Ph: [phone], Fax: [phone]
          WWW: http://www.auscript.com.au/
          Dragon Systems

    BRITE
          WWW: http://www.brite.com/
          Computer Telephony Integration & Interactive Voice Response

    DAX Systems, Inc.
          30 Chapin Road, Unit 1201, P.O. Box 778, Pine Brook, NJ/USA
          07058
          Ph: [phone], Fax: [phone]
          Email: [e-mail]
          WWW: http://www.daxsystems.com/
          Computer Telephony and Integrated Voice Response

    HealthCare Resources
          1444 Aviation Blvd, #103, Redondo Beach, CA 90278, USA
          Ph: [phone], Fax: [phone]
          EMail: [e-mail]
          Power Secretary & Dragon Dictate. Specializing in:
          Medical/Dental, Motion Picture Industry, Carpal Tunnel related
          and Disabled Persons.

    O'Brien Resources
          Ph: [phone] (Address unknown)
          Email: [e-mail]
          WWW: http://www.crosslink.net/~obrien/
          Kurzweil Voice Recognition Products

    SCI VoiceAutomated
          215 1/2 Main Street, Huntington Beach, CA 92648, USA
          Ph: 800-597-6600, Ph: [phone], Fax: [phone]
          http://www.voiceautomated.com/
          IBM VoiceType, Kurzweil Voice, DragonDictate and Philips
          speech.

    Synapse
          3095 Kerner Blvd., Suite S, San Rafael, CA 94901, USA
          Ph: [phone], Fax: [phone]
          Email: [e-mail]
          WWW: http://www.synapseadaptive.com/
          Dragon Systems, Kurzweil and IBM products.

    Talk Technology
          Ph: 1-800-270-1672, Fax: [phone]
          Email: [e-mail]
          http://www.talktechnology.com/

    Talk Technology, Inc.
          Tel: [phone], Fax: [phone]
          Email: [e-mail]
          WWW: http://www.usbusiness.com/talk/
          Dragon Dictate and portable (notebook) solutions

    ToppCopy Telecom
          Email: [e-mail]
          WWW: http://www.toppcopy.com/
          Philips Digital Dictation

    VoiceWare Systems
          230 California Street, Suite 410, San Francisco, CA 94111
          Ph: [phone], Fax: [phone]
          Email: [e-mail]
          WWW: http://www.talk2type.com/home.htm
          IBM, Dragon Systems, Kurzweil Applied Intelligence, WildCard
          Technologies

    WorkLink
          A.D.A. Solutions by WorkLink
          2566-A Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, California 94704 USA
          Ph: 510-848-8363, Fax:[phone]
          WWW: http://www.worklink.net/
          Email: [e-mail]
          Dragon Dictation Products



AbbotDemo

     * Platform: SunOS4, IRIX, Linux, HU-UX
     * Description: Large vocabulary, speaker independent, continuous
       automatic speech recognition system. Uses recurrent neural
       networks and hidden Markov models with a 5,000 word vocabulary
       upgradable) and a trigram word grammar. Includes a front end for
       waveform capture and display (including spectrogram) and a
       graphical display of the phoneme representation as well as a
       rewriting display of the best guess word sequence.
     * Requirements: UN*X, X, 8 Mbyte free RAM, 486DX or faster
       processor, 16 bit soundcard, reasonable quality microphone and a
       copy of the Wall Street Journal newspaper.
     * Price: Free for non-commercial use
     * Availability: By anonymous ftp from

        ftp://svr-ftp.eng.cam.ac.uk/pub/comp.speech/recognition/AbbotDemo

     * Note 1: This is not a complete system for dictation.
     * Note 2: At present there are no sources with this distribution.
       For sources for an earlier version see the recnet entry.
     * Note 3: Not supported.
     * Contact: [e-mail]
       Tony Robinson
       Cambridge University Engineering Department
       Trumpington Street, Cambridge, CB2 1PZ, UK
       Tel: [phone] Fax: [phone]



AT&T Watson Speech Recognition

     * Platform: Windows 95/NT on a Pentium 75 Mhz or higher
     * Description: Watson is a software implementation of AT&T Bell
       Laboratories voice processing technology. Watson includes BLASR
       Speech Recognition and FlexTalk speech synthesis (see Q5.5). It
       requires no special hardware to run other than a standard sound
       card and/or phone card. Technical details for BLASR Speech
       Recognition include:
          + Compliant with Microsoft Speech API and Telephone API
          + Speaker independent, continuous speech recognition
          + Fast, run-time vocabulary change
          + Open mic and telephone line environments
          + SoundBlaster compatible sound card and drivers required
          + Subword models and whole-word digit models
          + Background, silence, and filler/garbage models
          + 50 word name vocabulary or 100 word phrase real-time
            recognition with 95% accuracy
          + Rejection of out-of-vocabulary words
          + American English only - other languages in development
          + Barge-in speech begin/end notification - requires hardware
            echo cancellation
       The AT&T Advanced Speech Products Group home page provides more
       detailed information including a Frequently Asked Questions list,
       information for application developers on the Independent Software
       Vendor (ISV) Program (including info on the SDK, licensing, and
       the training program).
     * Requirements: Uses 2 MB RAM, 10 MB Disk. Requires a Pentium 75 MHz
       or higher CPU (uses
     * Cost and Availability: WATSON is a software-based speech platform
       with a Software Developers Kit (SDK) that allows application
       developers to use voice processing in their applications. It is
       not available as a stand-alone product.
       Licensing information (inc. price) is provided in the AT&T
       Advanced Speech Products Group home page
     * See also: Watson FlexTalk speech synthesis in Q5.5, Microsoft
       Speech API, and Advanced Speech API.
     * Contact: AT&T Advanced Speech Products Group
       Suite 700, 44 East Mifflin Street, Madison, WI 53703, USA
       Ph: 1-800-5-WATSON, Fax: [phone]
       Email: [e-mail]
       WWW: http://www.att.com/aspg/



BBN Hark Telephony Recognizer

     * Platform: Available for Unix-based workstation and PC platforms
       including IBM RS6000/AIX and Pentium/SCO Unix.
     * Description: Large vocabulary (2,000+ words), speaker independent,
       continuous ASR software. Specifically designed for large scale
       telephony applications. Using a client/server architecture, all
       features and capabilities are integrated in one software product
       instead of on separate boards. Very memory efficient, the Hark
       Telephony Recognizer runs in as little as 2MB of physical memory.
       Multiple recognizers can be run on a single platform. Uses Hidden
       Markov Model and phoneme-based BBN recognition algorithms. An API
       is provided for integration with existing applications. A
       developer's toolkit is available.
     * Price and availability: Price varies depending on vocabulary size.
       Version 3.0 available immediately.
     * Misc: BBN Hark provides application design and human factors
       consulting services. Regular monthly training classes on
       developing speech-enabled applications are held at BBN Hark's
       Cambridge (Mass) headquarters.
     * WWW: For additional information see BBN Hark's home page.
     * Contact: BBN Hark Systems
       70 Fawcett Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
       Tel: [phone] Fax: [phone]
       WWW: http://www.bbn.com/bbn_hark/HarkHome.html



Berkeley Restaurant Project (BeRP)

     * Description: BeRP is a test bed for a speech recognition system
       being developed by the International Computer Science Institute in
       Berkeley, CA. BeRP is a medium-vocabulary, speaker-independent
       spontaneous continuous speech understanding system. BeRP functions
       as a knowledge consultant whose domain is the restaurants in the
       city of Berkeley. The system serves as a testbed for several
       research projects, including robust feature extraction,
       connectionist phonetic likelihood estimation, automatic induction
       of multiple pronunciation lexicons, foreign accent detection and
       modeling, advanced language models, and lip-reading.
     * Note: As far as I know the BeRP software is in-house software -
       that is, it is not made available for distribution.
     * More information: http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/real/berp.html



Cambridge Voice for Windows

     * Platform: Windows
     * Description: Speaker-independent recognition of continuous speech
       in real time. Vocabularies can range from small to very large
       (more than 60,000 word forms). Support is planned for languages
       including English, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Italian,
       Norwegian, Spanish, Swedish, and Japanese. The engine complies
       with the Microsoft Speech API.
     * Contact: Cambridge Group Research, Ltd.
       Box 7290, Buffalo Grove, IL 60089
       Ph: [phone], Fax: [phone]
       E-mail: [e-mail]



CustomVoice and CustomTelephone: A&G Graphics Interface Inc.

     * Platform: Windows
     * CustomVoice: Speech recognition custom control for Visual Basic,
       Visual C++, Borland C++, and other development platforms that
       support *.VBX. Provides an engine/proprietary independent
       development platform for speech recognition. Currently supports
       ICSS, but should soon support other platforms. Includes a grammar
       debugger and parser APIs to parse spoken speech into useful data
       types.
       Requirements: 486/DX or better PC, Windows 3.1 or Windows for
       Workgroups, 8Mb RAM (minimum), SoundBlaster 16, microphone, and
       mouse. Supports Visual Basic, Visual C++, Borland C++, and Delphi.
     * CustomTelephone: Windows-based developers tool that allows
       programmers to build speech enabled "telephony" applications via
       standard custom control properties (VBX). It supports IBM
       VoiceType Application Factory (VTAF), a continuous speech, speaker
       independent speech recognizer, and supports voice response boards
       such as Dialogic. Comes with a VB custom control, pre-built
       grammar sets for common data types, an interactive grammar
       debugger to identify valid speech patterns, and parser API
       functions that convert recognized speech into data types supported
       by VB, C++ and Delphi. Includes sample applications with source
       code, and VBX, VCL and DLLs. Bundled with speech recognition
       engines.
       Requirements: 486/DX or better, Windows 3.1 or Windows for
       Workgroups, 8Mb RAM (minimum), SoundBlaster or compatible sound
       card, Dialogic D2X or D4X board, and mouse. Microphone and speaker
       optional. Supports Visual Basic, Visual C++, Borland C++, and
       Delphi.
     * Contact: A&G Graphics Interface
       51 Gore Street, Cambridge, MA 02141-1213 , USA
       Ph: [phone], Fax: [phone]
       Email: [e-mail]
       CompuServe: 74774,273 CompuServe ( GO SPEECH )
       WWW: http://www.customvoice.com/



DATAVOX - French

     * Platform: PC / DOS
     * Description: Continuous speech - speaker independent or dependent.
     * Requirements: 2 PC format boards (RdF1000 and TdS 96/25) and an
       A/D - D/A module (ASA116)
     * Misc: Application software may dialog with DATAVOX through 2 types
       of interfaces :
          + Keyboard overlay: The application software may be used with
            any PC compatible package. No specific adaptation is
            necessary, you only need to define your configuration with
            the application software.
          + C library: Allows a user-written program to drive the
            recognition system.
       DATAVOX is based on the AMADEUS speech recognition software
       developed at LIMSI. It provides
          + Continuous speech recognition with 500 words speaker
            dependent, 50 words speaker independent (custom-made
            vocabulary).
          + Grammar of the application language (syntax acquisition,
            verification and simplification software).
          + Large vocabulary : DATAVOX can recognize vocabularies of
            several thousand words as long as there are no more than 500
            words in the active vocabulary at any given node. It takes
            less than 1 second to change syntax and vocabulary.
          + Training controlled by the system (use of co-articulation
            models).
          + Response time less than 500 ms for any phrase length.
          + Synthetis (ADPCM) can be heard simultaneously while
            recognition is being carried out.
     * Contact: VECSYS
       Le Chene rond, 91570 Bievres, France
       Voice: 33 1 69 41 15 04, Fax: [phone]



Digital Dreams Speech Recognition Plug-Ins

     * Platform: Apple Macintosh
     * Description (General): A suite of speech plug-ins for the
       interactive multimedia market which enable developers to quickly
       incorporate speech recognition into their titles without having to
       resort to a low-level programming language, such as C. Speech
       plug-ins bridge the gap between a speech recognition API, such as
       Apple's PlainTalk Speech Recognition technology, and
       authoring/development environments, such as Macromedia Director or
       HyperCard. Digital Dreams currently offers Macintosh speech
       plug-ins for Macromedia Director and HyperCard. Support for other
       environments, including AppleScript, Apple Media Tool, Authorware,
       and Windows is being developed. Currently available for North
       American Adult English. More information is available on the
       Digital Dreams WWW site.
     * ShockTalk: is a combination of Netscape, ShockWave and Speech
       Recognition technologies for the Power Macintosh and Quadra AVs
       that enables you to navigate web sites and hyperlinks using spoken
       commands as well as create shockwave movies that respond to spoken
       user interactions.
     * Requirements: Power Macintosh (PowerPC w/ MacOS)
       Microphone (PlainTalk compatible)
       PlainTalk Speech Synthesis and PlainTalk Speech Recognition
       Netscape Navigator
     * Contact: Digital Dreams
       4308 Harbord Drive, Oakland, CA, 94618, USA
       Tel: [phone] Fax: [phone]
       email: [e-mail]
       WWW: http://www.surftalk.com/
       FTP: ftp://ftp.surftalk.com/



DragonDictate for Windows

     * Platform: Windows
     * Description: Information moved to the page on Dragon Dictation
       products including DragonDictate for Windows



Dragon Dictation Products

     * Dragon NaturallySpeaking
     * DragonDictate for Windows
     * Dragon PowerSecretary
     * General Information

  Dragon NaturallySpeaking

     * Platform: Windows
     * Description: General purpose, continuous speech dictation system.
       Personal Edition has a 30,000 word active vocabulary and comes
       with a 200,000+ word pronunciation dictionary; users can also add
       their own words or phrases.
       More information on Dragon's NaturallySpeaking web site.
     * Requirements: 133Mhz Pentium, 32 MB RAM (Windows 95) or 48 MB RAM
       (Windows NT 4.0), supported sound card.
     * Price: see Dragon's NaturallySpeaking web site.
     * Related products: see general information below
     * Contact: see general information below

  DragonDictate for Windows

     * Platform: Windows
     * Description: Speech-to-text dictation system. Discrete dictation;
       continuous command/control; speaker-adaptive. Also provides mouse
       movement for hands-free operation of Windows. Comes with a 120,000
       word pronunciation dictionary; users can also add their own words
       or phrases. Dictate directly into any application. Available in US
       and UK English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, and Swedish.
       Add-on vocabularies for medicine, law, business and finance,
       computers and technology, journalism.
       Available as DragonDictate Singles Editions (10,000 words active),
       DragonDictate Personal Edition (10,000 words active),
       DragonDictate Classic Edition (30,000 words active), DragonDictate
       Power Edition (60,000 words active).
       Includes Office97 support.
       More information on the Dragon Systems web site.
     * Requirements: 486/66, 7-10 MB dedicated RAM (depending on
       edition), Windows 3.1x, NT 3.51, or 95.
       Supported sound boards: Creative Labs Sound Blaster 16, Microsoft
       Windows Sound System, IBM M-Audio Capture/Playback Adapter, many
       notebooks with built-in audio.
       See Dragon Systems Compatibility list for details.
     * Price: Check at the Dragon Systems web site.
     * Related products: see general information below
     * Contact: see general information below

  Dragon PowerSecretary

     * Platform: Apple Macintosh
     * Description: Speaker dependent/adaptive system requiring words to
       be separated by short pauses. Available as PowerSecretary Power
       Edition, Personal Edition, PowerSecretary MED for Healthcare
       Professionals.
       Vocabulary: 30,000 - 60,000 at any one time, automatically
       selected from 120,000-word dictionary.
     * Requirements: Power Macintosh 6100, 7100, 8100, Performa 6100
       series, Powerbook 540, 68040 class Macintosh such as Quadra 660AV,
       700, 800, 840AV, 900, 950, Centris 650 and 660AV.
       Hard Disk with at least 25Mb free.
       System 7.5 or greater
       (Some systems require add-on hardware)
     * More information: PowerSecretary home page
     * Related products: see general information below
     * Contact: see general information below

  General Information

    Dragon Dictation Products

     * Dragon NaturallySpeaking
     * DragonDictate for Windows
     * Dragon PowerSecretary
     * General Information

    Dragon Developer Products

     * Dragon PhoneQuery
     * DragonXTools
     * Dragon SpeechTool
     * Dragon VoiceTools

    Related Web Sites

     * Simon Crosby's FAQ for DragonDictate

    Contact:

     * Dragon Systems, Inc.
       320 Nevada Street, Newton, MA 02160, USA
       Tel: [phone] or 1-800-TALK-TYP
       Fax: [phone]
       Email: [e-mail]
       WWW: http://www.dragonsys.com/
       CompuServe: GO DRAGON



Dragon Developer Tools

     * Dragon PhoneQuery
     * DragonXTools
     * Dragon SpeechTool
     * Dragon VoiceTools

  Dragon PhoneQuery

     * Platform: Windows NT
     * Description: Software for building voice response systems. Callers
       are able to do the following: Ask for information using completely
       natural and continuous language. Have a spoken dialog to fine tune
       a request. Request information to be faxed, sent by electronic
       mail, or read over the phone, using text-to-speech.
       More information on the Dragon Systems telephony pages.
     * Requirements: Pentium or Pentium Pro PC running Windows NT 4.0.
       Telephone interconnect requirements vary by application.
     * Related products: see general information below
     * Contact: see general information below

  DragonXTools

     * Platform: Windows
     * Description: VBX and OCX controls that allow an application to
       control DragonDictate's capabilities, ranging from small
       vocabulary command and control to customized large vocabulary
       dictation. More information is available on the Dragon Developer
       pages
     * Related products: see general information below
     * Contact: see general information below

  Dragon SpeechTool

     * Platform: Windows
     * Description: Create small, optimized vocabularies for your
       speech-enabled applications, or supplement DragonDictate's
       extensive built-in vocabularies with specialized terms and names.
       More information is available on the Dragon Developer pages
     * Related products: see general information below
     * Contact: see general information below

  Dragon VoiceTools

     * Platform: Windows, DOS
     * Description: integrate small-vocabulary speech recognition
       directly into your DOS and Windows 3.1x applications. More
       information is available on the Dragon Developer pages
     * Related products: see general information below
     * Contact: see general information below

  General Information

    Dragon Dictation Products

     * Dragon NaturallySpeaking
     * DragonDictate for Windows
     * Dragon PowerSecretary
     * General Information

    Dragon Developer Products

     * Dragon PhoneQuery
     * DragonXTools
     * Dragon SpeechTool
     * Dragon VoiceTools

    Related Web Sites

     * Simon Crosby's FAQ for DragonDictate

    Contact:

     * Dragon Systems, Inc.
       320 Nevada Street, Newton, MA 02160, USA
       Tel: [phone] or 1-800-TALK-TYP
       Fax: [phone]
       Email: [e-mail]
       WWW: http://www.dragonsys.com/
       CompuServe: GO DRAGON



EARS: Single Word Recognition Package

     * Platform: Linux and Unixs with the Voxware sound driver
     * Description: Intended as a limited ready-to-use single word
       recognizer. However, its design aims at being a platform for
       various kinds of methods used in speech recognition (SR). EARS is
       designed to be a flexible environment for recognition system
       components; for example, take this feature extractor and that
       recognizing method, and this list of words. New methods for single
       word recognition can be integrated easily, as EARS uses C++
       abstract base classes. You speak the words you want to be
       recognized later. Your utterances can be saved to RIFF WAV files
       for inspection, change or delete them before they are further
       processed to the pattern files on which the recognizer is finally
       trained. As of version 0.20, the feature extractors are:
       Rasta-PLP, PLP, LPC, Mel-Cepstrum. The implemented recognizers
       are: DTW and non-recurrent neural nets on fixed-size sound
       patterns.
     * Requirements: Soundcard with mic
     * Misc 1: The current version is an Alpha release.
     * Misc 2: For more information subscribe to the EARS mailing list.
       Send email to [e-mail] with "subscribe ears-list"
       in the body.
     * Misc 3: Niels Thorwirth ([e-mail])
       has made changes to Version 0.14 which support the AF audio server
       software (see Q1.11) and the OGI Speech Tools (see Q1.9) so that
       EARS is more portable to other UNIX platforms. Available by email
       to Niels.
     * Requirements: Soundcard with mic
     * Availability: Source and Linux binaries are available by anonymous
       ftp
       ftp://svr-ftp.eng.cam.ac.uk/pub/comp.speech/recognition/ears-0.26.
       tar.gz
       ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/apps/sound/speech/ears-0.26.tar.gz
     * Contact: Ralf W. Stephan: [e-mail]



Ficomp Interpreter 6000

     * Platform: DOS, Windows 3.1, Win95, Win NT, UNIX
     * Description: Ficomp Systems, inc., is a systems integrator that
       has developed commercial speaker-dependent, continuous-speech
       recognition applications for use in high noise environments on
       several platforms. Applications are specialized in the finance
       industry for exchange floors, banks and brokerage firms.
     * Contact: Ficomp Systems, Inc.
       Ph: [phone], Fax: [phone]
       117 Docks Corner Road, Dayton, NJ 08810
       E-Mail: [e-mail]
       WWW: http://www.ficompsystems.com/



HM2007 - Speech Recognition Chip

     * Platform: Intergrated circuit.
     * Description: HM2007 is a 48-pin single chip CMOS voice recognition
       LSI circuit with on-chip analog front end, voice analysis,
       recognition process and system control functions. A 40 word
       isolated-word voice recognition system can be composed of an
       external microphone, keyboard, SRAM and a few other components.
       When combined with a microprocessor, an intelligent recognition
       system can be built. A demo board for this chip is being
       distributed by The Summa Group.
     * Cost: Approx US$16 for the HM2007 and US$160 for the demo board.
     * Misc: Jean-Pierre Lereboullet's document on Voice Recognition
       Processors provides additional information on the HM2007.
     * Producer: HUALON Microelectronic Corp. USA
       Tel: [phone] Fax: [phone]
     * Distributor 1: Marywale Engineering Company
       Tel: [phone] Fax: [phone]
       Email: [e-mail]
     * Distributor 2: The Summa Group Limited
       One California Street, Suite #1940,
       San Francisco, CA 94111
       Ph: [phone]
     * Distributor 3: Images Company
       39 Seneca Loop, Staten Island, NY 10314, USA
       Ph: [phone], Fax: [phone]
       Sells single piece quanities of HM2007 48Pin Dip Chip and HM2007
       52 Pin PLCC style chip. Sells HM2007 Demo Kits unassembled $100.00
       and assembled $135.00 (using 48 Pin dip chip)



Entropic's HTK (HMM Toolkit)

     * Platform: Range of Unix platforms.
     * Description: HTK is a software toolkit for building continuous
       density HMM based speech recognisers. It consists of a number of
       library modules and a number of tools. Functions include speech
       analysis, training tools, recognition tools, results analysis, and
       an interactive tool for speech labelling. Many standard forms of
       continuous density HMM are possible. Can perform isolated word or
       connected word speech recognition. It van model whole words, sub-
       word units. Can perform speaker verification and other pattern
       recognition work using HMMs. HTK is now integerated with the
       ESPS/Waves speech research environment which is described in
       Section 1.9.
     * Misc 1: The availability of HTK changed in early 1993 when
       Entropic obtained exclusive marketing rights to HTK from the
       developers at Cambridge.
     * Misc 2: More detailed information on HTK is available from the
       Entropic WW server: http://www.entropic.com/htk.html
     * Cost: On request.
     * Contact:

    Entropic Research Laboratory,
    600 Pennsylvania Ave, S.E. Suite 202,
    Washington, D.C. 20003, USA
    Phone: [phone].
    email - [e-mail]
    WWW: http://www.entropic.com/



IBM VoiceType Dictation

     * Platform: OS/2 and Windows
     * Description: IBM VoiceType Dictation supports speech input at
       70-100 words a minute and can be used to control your desktop and
       applications. Isolated-word, speaker-dependent system using a
       speech adapter card. Available for U.S. English, U.K. English,
       French, German, Italian, Spanish and Arabic. Provided with a
       general office vocabulary and support for major OS/2 and Windows
       applications. Additional specialised vocabularies are available:
          + US: Legal, Emergency Medicine, Radiology and Journalism
          + UK: Legal
          + IT: Radiology
     * Requirements: See
       http://www.software.ibm.com/workgroup/voicetyp/vtprod13.html
     * Cost: See
       http://www.software.ibm.com/workgroup/voicetyp/vtordna.html
     * Misc: An IBM VoiceType Dictation FAQ is supported by UltraMedia
       Systems International (a distributor of IBM VoiceType):
       http://www.infi.net/~ums/ibmfaq.htm
     * Demo software: Available on the IBM WWW site:
       http://www.software.ibm.com/workgroup/voicetyp/vtcust1.html
     * Contact: US Ph: 1-800-TALK-2-ME or 1-914-766-1900.
       Email: [e-mail]
       WWW: http://www.software.ibm.com/workgroup/voicetyp/vtcust1.html

IBM VoiceType Control (US Only)

     * Platform: OS/2 and Windows
     * Description: VoiceType Control is a speech recognition navigator
       that lets you control programs by speaking. VoiceType Control
       converts voice commands to keystroke macros. The program provides
       speaker independent, continuous speech recognition, so you do not
       have to train the program for your specific speech patterns.
     * Requirements: ?
     * Cost: ?
     * Demo software:
       http://www.software.ibm.com/workgroup/voicetyp/vtcust2.html
     * Contact: US Ph: 1-800-TALK-2-ME or 1-914-766-1900.
       Email: [e-mail]
       WWW: http://www.software.ibm.com/workgroup/voicetyp/vtcust2.html



IN CUBE

     * Platform: Three versions for Windows 95, Windows NT and Sun
       SPARCstations
     * IN CUBE for Windows 95: Developed for general purpose Windows 95
       users. It is packaged for online distribution with a full working
       demo and an option to register and unlock the full product. The
       system uses Command Corp's Mark II continuous speech recognition
       engine and handles changable lexicons of up to 75 commands.
          + Price: $49.95 US
          + Requirements: 386/25MHz processor or better, Microsoft
            Windows 3.1 or later, Windows compatible sound card or
            built-in audio, and microphone.
          + Availability: http://www.commandcorp.com/cci/win95.html
            Demo mode available.
     * IN CUBE Mark II Pro for Windows NT: IN CUBE is a continuous
       realtime speech recognition system developed to provide a fast and
       convenient means of window navigation and voice macro command
       input for command intensive applications like CAD and publishing.
       Speaker-dependent training and ability to add new commands and
       macros.
          + Price: $495 including the PRO 8 microphone. $540 including
            the MT 858 desk microphone.
          + Requirements: Windows NT, Windows NT-compatible audio board
            (16-bit audio recommended).
          + Availability: http://www.commandcorp.com/cci/pront.html
            Demo available.
     * IN CUBE Voice Command for Sun SPARCstations: Provides continuous
       realtime speech recognition system for window navigation and voice
       macro command input to the workstation. Speaker-dependent training
       and ability to add new commands and macros.
       An IN CUBE Application Programming Interface is available with a
       library of linkable object modules is available for developers.
          + Price: $495 per seat. The developer's API sells for $695.
          + Requirements: SUN OS 4.1.x or Solaris 2.x with OpenWindows
            and Motif. Works with all audio-equipped SPARCs and clones.
            Models range from SPARCStation 1s to SPARCStation 20s.
          + Availability: http://www.commandcorp.com/cci/in3sparc.html
            A free 5 day evaluation license is available.
     * Contact: Command Corp. Inc.,
       3761 Venture Drive, PO Box 956099, Duluth, Georgia, 30136, USA
       Ph: [phone]
       Email: [e-mail]
       WWW: http://www.commandcorp.com/incube_welcome.html



Jialong He's Speech Recognition Research Tool

     * Platform: SUN SPARC (SunOS), PC (MSDOS)
     * Description: This is a speech recognition research tool. it
       contains a feature extraction program and three speech
       recognizers: a DTW recognizer, discrete didden Markov model (DHMM)
       based recognizer and Continuous density hidden Markov mode (CHMM)
       with Gaussian mixture functions based recognizer. The utilities
       are grouped as:
          + feature -- extract featue vectors from a speech signal (MFCC
            etc.)
          + dtwcmp -- dynamic time-wapping (DTW) comparision.
          + gensym -- turn vector sequences to discrete observation
            symbols.
            dhmm -- discrete HMM training program.
            dtest -- DHMM companion test program.
          + chmm -- continuous density HMM training program.
            viterbi -- CHMM companion test program.
       Note, this is a research tool not a complete speech recognition
       system.
     * Availability: By anonymous ftp:

        MSDOS Version
                UK:
                ftp://svr-ftp.eng.cam.ac.uk/pub/comp.speech/recognition/s
                pchtool.zip
                Germany:
                ftp://ftp.informatik.uni-ulm.de/pub/NI/jialong/spchtool.z
                ip

        Sun SPARC version, compiled with GNU C
                UK:
                ftp://svr-ftp.eng.cam.ac.uk/pub/comp.speech/recognition/s
                pch_sun_v1.tar.gz
                Germany:
                ftp://ftp.informatik.uni-ulm.de/pub/NI/jialong/speech_sun
                _v1.tar.gz

     * See also: Jialong He's Speaker Recognition (Identification) Tool
     * Contact: Jialong He
       email: [e-mail]



Kurzweil Voice for Windows

     * Platform: Windows 3.1 or later
     * Description: Kurzweil Voice for Windows is a dictation product
       enabling the user to create text and enter data by speaking to
       Windows-based applications. System is adaptive but requires no
       initial training. Users can choose either 30,000 or 60,000 word
       active vocabulary. Application command translation templates for
       popular Windows application such as WordPerfect, 1-2-3, Organizer,
       Word (30+ applications are listed on the Kuzweil WWW pages). More
       detailed information is available on the Kurzweil WWW pages.
     * Requirements: 486DX/33 or higher, 8 or 16 MB dedicated memory
       (depends on vocabulary, 30 MBs dedicated disk space, VGA or
       higher, Kurzweil-supplied microphone and DSP board.
     * Contact:
       Kurzweil Applied Intelligence, Inc.
       411 Waverley Oaks Road, Waltham, MA 02154 USA
       Phone: [phone]
       Email: [e-mail]
       WWW: http://www.kurzweil.com/

Kurzweil Clinical Reporter

     * Platform: Windows 3.1 or later
     * Description: Kurzweil Clinical Reporter is a voice-activated
       clinical reporting system for computer-based patient records. The
       family of products includes:
          + VoiceEM for emergency medicine
          + VoiceEM/TR for triage reporting
          + VoiceRAD for diagnostic imaging and radiology
          + VoicePATH for surgical and anatomical pathology
          + VoiceMED for Primary Care for family medicine, internal
            medicine and pediatrics
          + VoiceORTHO for office-based orthopaedic surgery
          + VoiceCATH for invasive cardiology
          + VoiceReport for general reporting
     * More information: from the Kurzweil WWW pages:
       http://www.kurzweil.com/medical/
     * Contact:
       Kurzweil Applied Intelligence, Inc.
       411 Waverley Oaks Road, Waltham, MA 02154 USA
       Phone: [phone]
       Email: [e-mail]
       WWW: http://www.kurzweil.com/



Lernout & Hauspie ASR 1000/T and 1000/M

   [Note: L&H asr200/A is described below.]

     * L&H asr1000/T: ASR for the Telephony and Telecommunications Market
     * L&H asr1000/M: TTS for the Computer and Multimedia Market

     * Description: Automatic speech recognition software providing
       continuous speech recognition, isolated word recognition, keyword
       spotting or continuous digits recognition. The engine is speaker
       independent, and phoneme-based with optimization for commonly used
       words. General features include:
          + Languages available: US English, German, French, Spanish
            (Castilian), Dutch.
          + Available vocabulary: >100,000 words.
          + Line adaptation.
          + Rejection of out of vocabulary/grammar words.
          + N-best alternatives for isolated word recognition and keyword
            spotting.
          + Push to talk.
     * asr1000/T
          + Single channel platform examples: Motorola 56156, TI
            TMS320C2X/C3X/C5X
          + Multi-channel platform examples: TI TMS320C3X/C5X, AT&T
            DSP32C/3210, Motorola 96000
          + Input: 8 kHz telephone sampling
     * asr1000/M
          + Single processor platform examples: Intel 486/Pentium
          + Input: 8 kHz telephone or 11 kHz microphone sampling
     * See also: L&H ASR SDK for Windows
     * More Information: on the Lernout & Hauspie WWW pages:
       http://www.lhs.com/asr.html
     * Cost: Unknown
     * Contact: Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products
       800 West Cummings Park, Suite 3100
       Woburn, MA 01801, USA
       Tel: [phone]
       Fax: [phone]
       Email: [e-mail]
       WWW: http://www.lhs.com/

Lernout & Hauspie ASR 200/A for the Automotive and Industrial Market

     * Description: Automatic speech recognition software providing
       isolated word recognition, keyword spotting and alphabet
       recognition (optional). This engine is robust, speaker independent
       and word based. Other features:
          + Vocabulary: 100 words US English
          + Voice activation detection
          + Response time
          + Platform examples: Analog Devices ADSP2101/5
          + Input: 8 kHz telephone or microphone sampling
     * See also: L&H ASR SDK for Windows
     * More Information: on the Lernout & Hauspie WWW pages:
       http://www.lhs.com/asr.html
     * Cost: Unknown
     * Contact: Lernout and Hauspie Speech Products
       20 Mall Road, 4th Floor
       Burlington, MA 01803, USA
       Ph: [phone], Fax: [phone]
       Email: [e-mail]
       WWW: http://www.lhs.com/



Lernout & Hauspie ASR SDK

     * Platform: Windows
     * Description: Windows based Software Development Kits are available
       for integrating automatic speech recognition technology with
       Windows based PC applications.
     * Requirements: IBM-compatible 486 DX/33 MHz + 8 MB RAM + MS DOS 5.0
       + MS Windows 3.1 (or higher) + Sound Blaster compatible sound
       board.
     * See also: L&H ASR Products
     * More Information: on the Lernout & Hauspie WWW pages:
       http://www.lhs.com/asr.html
     * Contact: Lernout and Hauspie Speech Products
       20 Mall Road, 4th Floor
       Burlington, MA 01803, USA
       Ph: [phone], Fax: [phone]
       Email: [e-mail]
       WWW: http://www.lhs.com/



Listen for Windows 2.0 from Verbex Voice Systems

     * Platform: Windows
     * Description: Listen for Windows Version 2.0 is a Speaker
       Independent software product that provides continuous speech
       recognition for Windows applications. The product works with most
       industry standard sound cards and PCs with inbedded audio chips.
       Listen for Windows comes with over 16,000 commands in speech
       interfaces for over 40 software applications, such as MS Office,
       Lotus SmartSuite,Quicken, etc. The Listen Command Editor allows a
       user to change or add commands to existing speech interfaces or
       create new speech interfaces for most Windows applications.
       More detailed information is available on the Verbex Listen for
       Windows page.
       Verbex also sells Verbal Advantage Voice Browser for controlling a
       web browser, Verbal Advantage DeskTop for controlling desktop
       applications.
     * Requirements: 486/25SX PC or higher
     * Pricing and Availbility: See the Verbex ordering page for pricing.
       Verbex products are available over the web or can be shipped.
       Microphones available from Verbex.
     * Demo: A "Freeware" demo is available from the Verbex WWW site demo
       page.
     * Contact: Verbex Voice Systems
       1090 King Georges Post Rd., Bldg 107, Edison NJ 08837, USA
       Ph: 1-800-ASK-VRBX, [phone], Fax:[phone]
       WWW: http://www.verbex.com/



Lotec Speech Recognition Package

     * Platform: Sun
     * Description: Public domain speech recognition software. Operates
       from input in Sun audio format (.au files) and outputs word
       hypotheses and time labelling data. The software includes programs
       to collect speech samples, a labeller, a "featurizer" which
       parameterises speech files, a word spotter and the recogniser. The
       software can real time recognition on a Sparc 10 for small
       vocabularies.
     * Requirements: Sun SPARC audio input and a "decent" microphone Sun
       multimedia demo software (in /usr/demo/SOUND) and X.
     * Availability: By anonymous ftp
       ftp://ftp.sanpo.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/pub/nigel/lotec/lotec.tar.Z
     * Contact: Nigel Ward: [e-mail] _


Macintosh Speech Recognition Manager

     * Platform: Macintosh
     * Description: supports developers who wish to add speech
       recognition to existing Macintosh applications. Provides speaker
       independent recognition and robustness to noise. Apple's Speech
       home page provides developer information and the complete speech
       recognition and synthesis synthesis SDKs. The recognition SDK
       includes samples code, control panels, interfaces, documentation
       and the recognizer.
     * Availability: under licensing conditions from the Macintosh Speech
       Developer's page
       http://www.speech.apple.com/speech/dev/dev.html.
     * Requirements: Power Macintosh with 16-bit sound, System 7.5, and a
       PlainTalk Microphone or equivalent
     * Cost: Free
     * See also: Macintosh Plaintalk and Speech Manager (Q5.5).
     * Note: Check out Kevin Lenzo's list of Macintosh Speech
       Applications.
     * Contact: Apple Computer, Inc.
       1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, CA 95014, USA
       WWW: http://www.speech.apple.com/
       Email: [e-mail]



Microsoft Speech Recognition

    Microsoft Dictation Research Demonstration

     * Platform: Windows 95 or Windows NT 4.0
     * Description: A free demonstration of research technology that
       enables a computer to transcribe what you speak into Windows
       applications such as email and word-processors. Features of the
       demo software include:
          + 60,000 word vocabulary with the ability to add new words
          + High recognition accuracy
          + Works with any Windows 5application
          + "Dictation Pad" provides enhanced dictation features
          + "IntelliSense" converts spoken numbers and times
            automatically
          + Compatible with the Microsoft Speech API
     * Requirements: Windows 95 or Windows NT 4.0, Pentium 90 or better
       (RISC builds are available), 16 megabytes of RAM on Windows 95,
       Sound card with 16 kHz 16 bit input signals, High quality
       close-talk microphone, Speakers.
     * Availability: Free demo software is available at:
       http://www.research.microsoft.com/research/srg/install.htm
     * More information: http://www.research.microsoft.com/research/srg/

    Microsoft Command and Control Engine

     * Platform: Windows 95
     * Description: Provides command and control speech recognition using
       SAPI (the Microsoft Speech API) and "Whisper", Microsoft's speech
       recognition technology. Features include:
          + Speaker independent, continuous, sub-word modeling, context
            free grammars
          + Has its own letter-to-sound rules means it can recognize any
            words in a grammar.
          + North American English
          + PC microphone and telephone speech recognition with high
            performance
          + Word spotting option
          + Results objects containing top-N choices, segmentation, and
            confidence
          + Written to SAPI, the Microsoft Speech API.
     * Requirements: Windows 95 or Windows NT 4.0, Pentium 60 or better.
       (RISC builds are available), 1.5 megabyte working set, 16 kHz or 8
       kHz input signals, 6 megabytes on disk, Requires Microsoft Speech
       SDK to use.
     * Availability: Free demo software is available at:
       http://www.research.microsoft.com/research/srg/install.htm
     * More information: http://www.research.microsoft.com/research/srg/



Myers' Hidden Markov Model software

     * Platform: Unix
     * Description: Hidden Markov model software for automatic speech
       recognition. C++ code that implements a basic left-right hidden
       Markov model and corresponding Baum-Welch (ML) training algorithm.
       It is meant as an example of the HMM algorithms described by
       L.Rabiner and others. The code was built in order to learn how HMM
       systems work and we are now offering it to the net so that others
       can learn how to use HMMs for speech recognition. Keep in mind
       that ease of understanding was our primary concern, not
       efficiency. The code can be used to build an experimental speech
       recognition systems using "train_hmm" and "test_hmm", and can be
       used in conjunction with written tutorials on HMMs to understand
       how they work.
     * Availability: By anonymous ftp from the comp.speech archive site.
       There are two files in the directory
          + ftp://svr-ftp.eng.cam.ac.uk/pub/comp.speech/recognition/
       The files are
          + hmm.README
          + hmm-1.03.tar.gz
     * Contact: Richard Myers: [e-mail]



NCC Dictate

     * Platform: Windows
     * Description: NCC Digital DictateTM is an add-on, enhanced
       interface for use with IBM's VoiceType(TM) Dictation for Windows
       and various Windows 3.1 applications (e.g. MS Word, WordPerfect).
       Digital DictateTM provides faster corrections and dictation rates
       and various other features. This version is not a stand alone
       product; it requires VoiceTypeTM Dictation to provide the speech
       recognition engine and the Windows application. Features include:
          + Direct dictation into Windows applications with access to all
            functions while dictating.
          + Versions for MS Word, WordPerfect, Ami Pro, and other Windows
            applications.
          + Speech enabled editing.
          + Capability to save speaker models and defer corrections.
          + Microphone "pause and restore" functions controlled with
            speech commands.
          + Add-on vocabularies for legal, medical, science and business.
          + SWITCH-ITTM foot pedal control or CardSwitchTM infrared
            wireless control available which switch between dictation and
            proofing/correction modes.
     * Requirements: IBM's VoiceTypeTM Dictation for Windows; a computer
       system meeting VoiceTypeTM Dictation for Windows requirements;
       VoiceTypeTM Dictation Adapter.
     * Availability: Through computer dealerships.
     * Price: $US295
     * Contact: NCC Incorporated
       5808 E. Turquoise, Scottsdale, AZ 85253
       Ph: [phone] Fax: [phone]



NICO Artificial Neural Network Toolkit

     * Platform: UNIX (ANSI C source code)
     * Description: The NICO Toolkit is an artificial neural network
       toolkit specifically designed and optimized for automatic speech
       recognition applications. Networks with both recurrent connections
       and time-delay windows are easily constructed. The network
       topology is flexible -- any number of layers is allowed and layers
       can be arbitrarily connected. Tools for extracting input-features
       from the speech signal are included as well as tools for computing
       target values from standard phonetic label-files.
     * Availability: Through the NICO homepage
       (http://www.speech.kth.se/NICO/index.html)
       or the download page.
     * Contact: Nikko Strom, [e-mail]



Nuance Speech Recognition System

     * Platform: UNIX-based workstations including Sun and SGI.
     * Description: The Nuance Recognizer features client-server
       architecture with multiple recognizers available on a single
       processing platform. Primarily developed for telephony-based
       applications, the system accepts speaker-independent, continuous
       speech and supports very large vocabularies. Included is a
       "template matching" natural language capability for identifying
       the meaning of speech. A toolkit is available for use in
       developing a wide variety of speech recognition applications.
     * Price and availability: Contact Nuance
     * Contact: Nuance Communications
       1380 Willow Road, Menlo Park, CA 94025, USA
       Ph: [phone], Fax: [phone]
       WWW: http://www.nuance.com/



OKI VRP6679 - Voice Recognition Processor

     * Platform: Intergrated circuit.
     * Description: Speech recognition IC. 25 words max. Speaker
       independent recognition capability. Recognition rate quoted as 97%
       in a noisy environment (e.g. a car).
     * Misc: Alias MSM6679
     * Misc 2: More information is provided in Jean-Pierre Lereboullet's
       document on Voice Recognition Processors.
     * Cost: Approx US$20. Demo board $876
     * Availability: OKI Semiconductor and OKI Distributors
       Corporate Headquarters
       785 North Mary Avenue, Sunnyvale, CA, 94086 2909
       Tel: [phone], Fax: [phone]



Phonetic Engine 500 (PE500) from Speech Systems, Inc.

     * Platform: Windows
     * Description: Speaker independent, 40,000 word vocabulary,
       continuous speech recognition for MS Windows. Grammars with high
       perplexity possible. Includes noise rejection. Uses proprietary
       DSP board.
     * Cost: Prices in US$ - quantity one. The PE500 SDK is $995.00
       including board, microphone, and runtime software. Runtime only is
       $595.00. SpeechWizard(r) adds speech input to existing Windows
       applications, $295.00. Two-day training: $295.00 with purchase,
       $595.00 without.
     * Misc: The user defines the grammar of allowed utterances and must
       write software to invoke the board driver functions that control
       recognition. The user must also write software to
       collect/parse/interpret the ASCII text strings returned when
       recognition succeeds.
     * Misc 2: SSI now offers speech application development services.
     * Contact:

    Speech Systems, Inc.
    2945 Center Green Court South
    Boulder, CO 80301-2275, USA
    Tel: [phone] Fax: [phone]
    http://www.speechsys.com



Philips Speech Recognition (2 products)

    SpeechMagic: Dictation

     * Platform: Windows 3.1 and higher
     * Description: A continuous speech recognizer providing a 64,000
       word vocabulary, speaker adaptation and multiple languages.
       SpeechMagic is currently available for English and German.
       SpeechMagic acts as a server application, processing speech input
       and providing text output. Uses an add-on ISA compatible
       recognition accelerator board. SpeechMagic provided a correction
       editor, editing and playback of recordings, and a vocabulary
       manager for entering new words, abbreviations, macros and special
       transcriptions (e.g. for foreign words). Windows DDE support and a
       native API are provided for integration.
     * Hardware Requirements: IBM compatible personal computer (486DX/ 66
       MHz or higher), minimum 16 MB of RAM, hard disk capacity > 500 MB,
       and a Philips LFH 6210 Accelerator Board.
     * More Information: For more information visit the SpeechMagic WWW
       page or the Philips Speech home page.

    Speech Processing System 6000s (Europe only)

     * Description: Dictation of medical findings using continuous speech
       recognition. Designed for German speaking radiologists and
       encompasses the complete radiology vocabulary. The authors use
       dictation stations (PCs) which are fitted with microphones. The
       transcriptionists use editing stations (also PCs) which are
       additionally fitted with headphones and footswitches. The SP6000s
       has a single speech recognition unit serving all users, and it
       offers automatic data transfer as well as the advantages of
       digital dictation functions. For more information visit the
       Philips SP6000s WWW page.
     * More Information: For more information visit the Philips SP6000s
       WWW page or the Philips Speech home page.



Dragon PowerSecretary

     * Platform: Apple
     * Description: Information moved to the page on Dragon Dictation
       products including Dragon PowerSecretary
       (Previously Articulate PowerSecretary.)



ProNotes Voice Tools

     * Platform: Windows
     * Description: ProNotes Voice Tools are designed to bring the speech
       recognition capabilities of the IBM VoiceTypeTM Dictation System
       for Windows into any program without the need for the programmer
       to directly interface with the speech engine at the API level.
       There are five tools, as described below, which are all available
       in three forms: Visual Basic(TM) Custom Controls (known as VBXs),
       16-bit OLE Custom Controls, and 32-bit OLE Custom Controls. The
       tools are intended for use by Windows(TM) developers working with
       Windows 3.1(TM), Windows for Workgroups 3.11(TM), Windows NT 3.51
       Workstation(TM), and Windows 95(TM). The custom controls can be
       utilized with any application development environment which
       supports the use of such controls (e.g. Visual Basic and Visual
       C++).

        Playback and Record
                An object which allows developers to use the IBM Speech
                Engine to record and play back sound files. Can be used
                to add voice prompts and to allow end users to record and
                playback sound files.

        Voice Button
                An object having standard button properties and behavior,
                which can additionally be controlled by voice. The button
                can also be used as a label or a 3D panel.

        Dictation Window
                A text box that allows free dictation, voice macro
                utilization, and correction by voice. Each Dictation
                Window has access to global and context sensitive
                vocabularies for both command and dictation. There are
                three correction modes.

        Voice List Box
                Has standard list box properties and behavior, but can
                additionally be controlled by voice. A user can select
                items by pronouncing the entry's text or the entries can
                be numbered and selected accordingly.

        Voice Navigator
                Provides navigation by voice within an application
                developed with the Voice Tools, between voice-enabled
                objects described above, as well as some standard objects
                found within the application.

     * Requirements: Hardware: 80486/33 DX or higher, 60MB hard disk
       space for IBM VoiceType Dictation software, 10MB hard disk space
       for ProNotes Voice Tools, 3.5" floppy, VGA (or compatible), 16MB
       RAM, IBM VoiceType Dictation adapter, microphone, and speakers.
       Software: DOS version 6.0 or later, with SHARE.EXE running,
       Windows 3.1 or later, IBM VoiceType Dictation software, any
       programming environment or system compatible with Visual Basic or
       OLE Custom Controls.
     * Price: Unknown
     * Contact: Pronotes, Inc.
       1546 Magee Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19149, USA
       Ph: 800-70-NOTES or [phone], Fax: [phone]
       Email: [e-mail]
       WWW: http://www.pronotes.com/



PureSpeech 2.0 Recognition Engine

     * Platform: Windows 3.1, Windows 95, Unix, Dialogic Antares DSP
     * Description: Speaker-independent, continuous speech, large active
       vocabulary speech recognition engine for American English, UK
       English, French, German and Spanish. Permits on-the-fly additions
       to the vocabulary using phonetic models and telephone or wideband
       microphone input. Flexible grammar, natural language processing,
       discourse models. Software only with a small RAM/CPU footprint.
       Can be used as a voice user interfaces (VUI's) for PC software
       applications. Can also be used for high-volume call center
       telephony, especially in banks, finance and other specialized
       applications.
       A toolkit for the Dialogic Antares is available.
     * Availability: PureSpeech is not available as a stand-alone
       product. It is available embedded in Windows-based software or as
       a toolkit.
     * Contact: PureSpeech, Inc
       100 Cambridge Park Drive, Cambridge, MA 02140, USA
       Ph: [phone] Fax: [phone]
       Email: [e-mail]
       WWW: http://www.speech.com/



recnet

     * Platform: UNIX
     * Description: Speech recognition for the speaker independent TIMIT
       and Resource Management tasks. It uses recurrent networks to
       estimate phone probabilities and Markov models to find the most
       probable sequence of phones or words. The system is a snapshot of
       evolving research code. There is no documentation other than
       published research papers. The components are:
          + A preprocessor which implements many standard and many non-
            standard front end processing techniques.
          + A recurrent net recogniser and parameter files
          + Two Markov model based recognisers, one for phone recognition
            and one for word recognition
          + A dynamic programming scoring package. The complete system
            performs competatively.
     * Cost: Free
     * Requirements: TIMIT and Resource Management databases
     * Contact: Tony Robinson: [e-mail]_
     * Availability: by anonymous ftp

                ftp://svr-ftp.eng.cam.ac.uk/pub/comp.speech/recognition/r
                ecnet-1.3.tar.Z



Sensory Inc. Integrated Circuits

     * Platform: Integrated circuits
     * Description: Sensory's low cost high quality Interactive Speech
       line of speech recognition IC's are designed for consumer
       telephony products, portable consumer electronics, and other
       consumer applications. Technologies available include speech
       recognition (speaker-independent and speaker-dependent), speaker
       verification, speech/music synthesis, digital record/playback, and
       general product control on one chip. Development tools and
       demonstration units are available. Detailed product information on
       the Interactive Speech chips is available from the Sensory
       Circuits WWW site.
     * Contact: Sensory, Inc.
       521 E. Weddell Drive, Sunnyvale, CA 94089
       Ph: [phone], Fax: [phone]
       Email: [e-mail]
       WWW: http://www.sensoryinc.com/



Simon Says (NeXT)

     * Platform: NeXT
     * Description: Provides the ability to link commands to spoken
       phrases.
     * Availability:By anonymous ftp.
       Simon Says demo
       ftp://ftp.informatik.uni-muenchen.de/pub/comp/platforms/next/Audio
       /audio-apps/SimonSaysDemo.1.5.1.N.b.tar.gz
       Readme file
       ftp://ftp.informatik.uni-muenchen.de/pub/comp/platforms/next/Audio
       /audio-apps/SimonSaysDemo.1.5.1.README
     * Contact: Metrosoft
       710 13th Street, Suite 310 X, San Diego, California 92101
       Ph: 619.488.9411 Fax: [phone]
       Email: [e-mail] [NeXTmail welcome]



smARTspeak from Advanced Recognition Technologies, Inc.

     * Platform: Windows, Windows 95, DOS, and General Magic
       It also works on the following Processors/Microcontollers: Intel's
       80 x 86, Intel's 8031, 8051, Motorola's 68000, and Hitachi's SH1,
       SH3, SH8.
     * Description: smARTspeak is suited to voice command and control
       applications, such as voice dialing in cellular and desktop
       telephones, or voice command operation in computers and multimedia
       products. It uses a compact (10KB size on 16 bit machines), fast,
       user dependent recognition engine.
       smARTspeak can recognize any language in any accent.
       ART recently completed a Software Developer Kit (SDK) for
       smARTspeak, running under Windows 3.1 or higher which allows the
       voice recognition engine to be used within Windows Applications.
       More detailed information on smARTspeak and the SDK is available
       on the ART WWW pages.
     * Availability: Currently liscensed to other equipment manufacturers
       (OEMs), system integraters, software, and application developers,
       and value added resellers (VARs) who port are technology into
       their product.
     * Contact: Advanced Recognition Technologies, Inc.
       International Office:
       43 Brodezky Street, POB 39918, 61398 Tel Aviv, lsrael
       Ph: 972-3-642-7242, Fax: [phone]
       Email: [e-mail]
       WWW: http://www.artcomp.com/
       US Office:
       9574 Topanga Canyon Blvd. Chatsworth, CA 91311, USA
       Ph: 818-678-3999, Fax: [phone]
       WWW: http://www.artcomp.com/



Speech Commander - Verbex Voice Systems

     * Platform: Various: external hardware with serial port connection
     * Description: A hand-held (portable) device about the size of a
       paperback book which provides speaker-dependent continuous speech
       recognition. The active vocabulary is dependent on the model
       chosen and can vary from 300 to 10,000 active words. The device
       connects through a serial port, so it can be connected to a wide
       range of computers. It comes with a battery pack.
     * Contact: Verbex Voice Systems
       1090 King Georges Post Rd., Bldg 107,
       Edison NJ 08837, USA
       Ph: [phone], Fax: [phone]
       Email: [e-mail]
       WWW: http://www.verbex.com/



'Speech Recognition Expert' Toolkit for Windows

     * Description: Provides an object-oriented development tool designed
       to rapidly build speech enabled applications without writting
       source code. Currently supports IBM's VoiceType Application
       Factory. Future versions to support other platforms. Includes
       BlackBox library and Custom Grammar Tools.
     * Requirements: Layout for Windows from Objects, Inc.
     * Price: $US349 + Shipping/Handling
     * Contact: Speech Technologies, Inc.
       P.O. Box 3905
       Naperville, IL 60567-3905
       CompuServe @102147,3521
       Ph: [phone]



Visual Voice from Stylus Innovation

     * Platform: Microsoft Windows
     * Description: Visual Voice is a toolkit for building Windows-based
       voice processing and telephony applications including interactive
       voice response (e.g. touch-tone banking), fax-on-demand, and voice
       mail. Visual Voice can be used to add voice recognition to your
       telephony applications.
       Voice Recognition (VR) Support for Visual Voice is exposed as a
       standard VBX control and provides one or more voice recognition
       "resources" to your application. Applications can dynamically
       assign resources across several voice lines. Voice recognition is
       either "discrete" or "continuous". Discrete recognition is
       slightly more accurate and requires the speaker to pause briefly
       between words. Continuous recognition provides a natural way to
       enter information by speaking without pauses. Three configurations
       are supported:

        Software-Only Solution
                The software only solution uses Telaccount's SpeechEasy
                technology for discrete recognition using your PC's CPU.
                A vocabulary is included with digits, basic command words
                and more.

        Hardware-Assisted Solution with Dialogic AEB boards
                Discrete voice recognition in over 25 languages using
                Dialogic D/41D voice boards and the Dialogic VR/40 board.
                Vocabularies are included with digits, basic command
                words, voice mail vocabulary and more.

        Hardware-Assisted Solution with Dialogic PEB boards.
                Use the VR control with any Dialogic PEB-based voice
                board, such as the D/12x or D/24x, to access voice
                recognition resources from your phone lines. This
                requires a Dialogic VRP board with either 1 to 4 VRM/40
                modules (4 channel discrete voice recognition modules)
                and/or 1 to 4 VRM/2C modules (2 channel continuous voice
                recognition modules). You can have up to 4 modules on
                each VRP: 4 VRM/40s for 16 channels of discrete voice
                recognition; 4 VRM/2Cs for 8 channels of continuous
                recognition; or a combination. Over 25 languages
                supported. Includes vocabularies as described above.

     * Pricing: Unknown
     * Availability: From Stylus Innovations Inc. or from the
       distributors listed on the Stylus WWW pages.
     * Misc: More detailed technical information, slide show
       demonstration software is available on the Stylus home page.
     * Contact: Stylus Innovation Inc.
       One Kendall Square, Building 300, Cambridge, MA 02139
       Ph: [phone], Fax: [phone]
       WWW: http://www.stylus.com/
       Compuserve forum: GO STYLUS
       Email: [e-mail]



Voice Command Line Interface

     * Platform: Amiga
     * Description: VCLI will execute CLI commands, ARexx commands, or
       ARexx scripts by voice command through your audio digitizer. VCLI
       allows you to launch multiple applications or control any program
       with an ARexx capability entirely by spoken voice command. VCLI is
       fully multitasking and will run in the background, continuously
       listening for your voice commands even while other programs are
       running. Documentation is provided in AmigaGuide format. VCLI 6.0
       runs under either Amiga DOS 2.0 or 3.0.
     * Requirements: Supports the DSS8, PerfectSound 3, Sound Master,
       Sound Magic, and Generic audio digitizers.
     * Availability: by ftp from wuarchive.wustl.edu in the file
       systems/amiga/incoming/audio/VCLI60.lha and from
       amiga.physik.unizh.ch as the file pub/aminet/util/misc/VCLI60.lha
     * Contact: Author's email is [e-mail]



Voice Control Systems Continuous Speech Recognition

     * Description: Voice Control Systems (VCS) continuous speech
       recognition is a proprietary phonetic recognizer based on
       technology developed at VCS over the last 17 years. It is robust
       for applications such as the "hands-free" automotive environment
       or telephone networks, both wireless and wireline. VCS speech
       recognition is used by many developers and manufacturers in
       telecommunications. VCS technology is a software-based capability
       which VCS has currently developed for a limited number of
       processing environments. VCS offers "off-the-shelf" capabilities
       for the TI-C3X and C4X DSPs with other hardware platform support
       planned for the future. As a benchmark, today's VCS continuous
       technology requires about 1/2 of a 33Mhz TMS320C31. VCS continuous
       technology is available in cellular and wireline based libraries
       for continuous digit input in approximately 15 languages. VCS
       continuous recognition is a modified HMM decision strategy built
       upon the foundation of VCS phonetic "front end".
     * Availability: VCS continuous technology is available today in
       software form from VCS or implemented in hardware or speech
       systems from VCS distributors including Dialogic Corporation,
       Brite Voice, Intervoice, Periphonics, and Syntellect.
     * Cost: Software royalties are volume based and range from per unit
       costs of $500 per recognizer to less than $5 in large quantities.
     * See also: the VCS Phonetic Dictionary Recognizer and VCS Isolated
       Word Speech Recognition below, and the VCS 2030 & 2060 Voice
       Dialers.
     * Contact: Voice Control Systems, Inc.
       14140 Midway Rd., Dallas, Tx. 75244, USA
       Ph: [phone], Fax: [phone]
       Email: [e-mail]
       WWW: http://www.voicecontrol.com/

Voice Control Systems Phonetic Dictionary Recognizer

     * Description: This recognizer is based upon a HMM type recognition
       strategy coupled with the VCS "front end" (feature extraction
       software). The HMM modeling is based upon the basic phonetic
       building blocks in each language. In American English this is
       approximately 43 units. The recognition vocabulary is built up by
       combining these units into word models. By building the words in
       this way new recognition vocabularies may be constructed. The
       phonetic assembly can also be used for "word spotting" recognition
       libraries.
     * Platform: This VCS recognition software runs on the TI TMS320C30
       DSP. Two recognizers can operate on a single 55mhz C30. Currently
       the software may be purchased as an Enhanced Technology from VCS
       to run on the Dialogic VR/160p speech recognizer board. The
       hardware is purchased from Dialogic, with the "Enhanced" software
       purchased from VCS. Up to four phonetic recognizers can run on a
       single 160; one per VRM2C (C30-33mhz DSP) daughtercard.
     * Note: This recognizer is in its late "beta" stage of development
       and is available for U.S. English vocabularies. Other languages
       are presently under development.
     * Price: VCS software is priced at $350 per recognizer for unit
       quantities with volume discounts available.
     * See also: VCS Continuous Recognition above, VCS Isolated Word
       Speech Recognition below, and the VCS 2030 & 2060 Voice Dialers.
     * Contact: Voice Control Systems, Inc.
       14140 Midway Rd., Dallas, Tx. 75244, USA
       Ph: [phone], Fax: [phone]
       Email: [e-mail]
       WWW: http://www.voicecontrol.com/

Voice Control Systems Isolated Word Speech Recognition

     * Description: Voice Control Systems (VCS) isolated word recognition
       using VCS phonetic recognizer technology. It is robust in
       demanding environments such as the "hands-free" automotive
       environment, telephone networks, wireless or wireline.
       Capabilities include speaker-independent, speaker-dependent and
       speaker-adaptive recognition. Libraries are available for 45+
       languages and custom vocabulary development services are
       available. The technology is suited for many applications
       including:
          + Desktop computing: such as keyboard accelerators
            orinteractive multimedia.
          + Network telephony: such as automating operator functions or
            voice dialing.
          + Computer telephony: such as remote access to a personal
            computers.
          + Automotive accessory control: such as voice activated
            cellular phones or other automotive accessories.
          + Consumer electronics: such as voice controllers for video
            games or VCRs and televisions.
     * Platform: Include Intel-X86, TI-C5X, C3X, C4X and C2X, OKI 6679,
       and NEC-V20 and V30, and can operate on 16 bit microcontrollers.
       As a benchmark, 8 recognizers can run on an Intel 486-33 DX.
     * Availability: The technology is available under software licenses
       direct from VCS or by purchasing hardware from an OEM. VCS OEMs
       include: Dialogic, Oki Semiconductor, Intervoice, Periphonics,
       etc.
     * Cost: VCS isolated word recognition software is available under a
       volume pricing license agreement. Small quantity royalties are in
       the $500.00 per recognizer range while large (millions) quantity
       royalties are less than $1.00 per recognizer.
     * See also: VCS Continuous Speech Recognition and VCS Phonetic
       Dictionary Recognizer above, and the VCS 2030 & 2060 Voice
       Dialers.
     * Contact: Voice Control Systems, Inc.
       14140 Midway Rd., Dallas, Tx. 75244, USA
       Ph: [phone], Fax: [phone]
       Email: [e-mail]
       WWW: http://www.voicecontrol.com/



Visus SpeechKit

     * Platform: NeXT
     * Description: SpeechKit is based on SPHINX, a speaker-independent,
       1000 word or so, continuous speech recognition system which allows
       you to incorporate speech recognition into your applications. You
       can design your vocabulary and grammars.
     * Contact: Visus - no address or phone provided. A possible contact
       is Robert Brennan at Carnegie Mellon University. email:
       [e-mail]



VCS 2060 Voice Dialer

VCS 2030 Voice Dialer

     * Platform: Stand-alone hardware, TMS320C5X based with VCS phonetic
       speech recognition and CELP speech compression.
     * Description: The VCS 2060 is a telephone dialing system which
       recognizes 50 names - and speed dials the associated telephone
       number. The VCS 2030 has 20 memories. Users use
       speaker-independent recognition to select the "call", "program",
       or "list" menu, then place a call, enroll a new memory, or listen
       to playback of entries in the phonebook. Enrollment is simple and
       includes a "name tag" enrollment pass so that when one selects an
       entry to call, the selection is confirmed by repeating the
       memory's associated name tag, e.g. "calling Pete". The system uses
       both speaker-independent and speaker-dependent technology from
       Voice Control Systems, Inc.
     * Installation: The VCS 2060 can be installed in series (RJ-11) with
       one phone for single phone operation or installed in parallel
       (RJ-31) to provide voice dialing from every phone in a house.
     * Cost: Standard retail prices:
          + VCS 2030 Voice Dialer - $269.00
          + VCS 2060 Voice Dialer - $299.00
     * Availability: From catalogs or direct from Voice Control Systems.
       Voice Control Systems
       14140 Midway Rd., Dallas, Tx. 75225, USA
       Ph: 800-VCS-7525, Fax: [phone]
       Email: [e-mail]
       WWW: http://www.voicecontrol.com/



Voice-Trek 2.0

     * Platform: Unknown.
     * Description: VoiceTrek is primarily used by the United States
       Postal Service to sort mail. Tardis Technology Inc. was created to
       develop and market applications that utilize speech recognition.
       They do consulting work as well as turnkey systems.
     * Contact: Tardis Technology Inc., Voice Recognition Div.
       6444 E. Spring St., #286, Long Beach, CA 90815-1500, USA
       Phone: [phone], Fax: [phone]



VoiceAssist for Windows from Creative Labs, Inc.

     * Platform: Windows
     * Description: Seeking a description.
     * Availability: VoiceAssist preview software is available from the
       Creative Labs VoiceAssist home page.
     * Contact: Creative Labs, Inc.
       Ph: 1-800-998-1000 (Sales)
       Ph: 1-800-998-5227 (Product info and dealer referrals)
       CompuServe: support forum: GO BLASTER
       WWW: http://www.creaf.com/



VoiceServer for Windows

     * Platform: Windows
     * Description: Speaker dependent, each with an independent
       directory. Isolated words. Up to 1000 words/user, 300
       words/window. 1 word occupies 2Kb on hard disk. Can be used to
       control Windows applications by issuing voice commands instead of
       menu selection.
     * Rough Cost: 292 Pounds(UK)
     * Requirements: None
     * Misc: Price includes a half-sized AT voice card (including a DSP),
       software, documentation & a microphone (attachable to keyboard or
       speaker). A light-weight high-spec headset is an optional extra.
     * Contact:

    Mark Redwood
    Applied Voice Technologies
    26 Danbury Street, Islington,
    London, UK, N1 8JU
    Ph: + 44 71 454 1224 : Fax: + 44 71 454 1225



Voicetek Corp.

     * Platform: Unknown.
     * Description:Voicetek Corporation provides voice processing
       solutions, training and consulting services and an
       object-oriented, graphical Generations Platform for development of
       integrated computer telephony systems.
     * Contact: Voicetek Corporation
       19 Alpha Road, Chelmsford, MA 01824, USA
       Ph: [phone], Fax: [phone]
       WWW: http://www.voicetek.com/



Votan VPC2100 Voice Card and VSP 1010 Speech Processor

     * Platform: DOS
     * VPC2100 Voice Card: a hardware and software system based on the
       TMS320C10. providing continuous speech recognition. The VPC2100
       consists of a circuit board, microphone, speaker, software, and
       documentation. It is designed to add voice I/O and telephone
       management capabilities to the PC/AT and compatibles. Features:
          + Voice store-and-forward at 4- to 16.4-Kb/s speed
          + Speaker-independent speech recognition (0-9, YES, NO)
          + Continuous speaker-dependent speech recognition
          + Telephone interface, pulse or tone dialing, call progress,
            and DTMF
          + Software for development, voice mail, telephone management,
            and VoiceKey
          + High-level applications-generator software
     * Votan VSP 1010 speech-processor board: can service a single voice
       channel, providing recognition, voice output, and telephone
       interfacing. Digital signal processing is performed by a TMS320
       integrated circuit.
     * Costs: Unknown
     * WWW: http://www.ti.com/sc/docs/dsps/develop/3rdparty/vot.htm
     * Contact: Votan Division, MOSCOM Corporation
       6920 Koll Center Parkway, Suite 214, Pleasanton, CA 94566, USA
       Ph: [phone], Fax: [phone]



Voice Processing Corporation Speech Recognition Product Line

     * Platform: Unknown.
     * Description: Voice Processing Corporation (VPC) supplies automated
       speech recognition systems. VPC's products are used in the
       telecommunications, cellular and personal computer markets to
       enable computers to understand human speech. The company's VPro
       product line is sold to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs),
       value added resellers (VARs), system integrators and application
       developers. VPC's speech recognition systems are currently used in
       applications such as voice mail, voice activated dialing,
       interactive voice response, and command and control of personal
       computers.
       The following are descriptions of the Voice Processing
       Corporation's VPro Product Line: VProContinuous, VPro/XD, VPro/RT,
       VProCel, VProSpeller, VProPRL, VPro hardware platforms, and the
       application Osprey.
       More information is available on these products at the VPC WWW
       site: http://www.vpro.com/
     * VProContinuous(TM) is a speaker-independent, continuous digit
       recognizer. It recognizes digit strings spoken in a continuous
       manner, by any caller, without unnatural beeps or pauses.
       VProContinuous uses out-of-vocabulary rejection and word spotting
       technologies to reject extraneous words and phrases often spoken
       by callers. The VProContinuous vocabulary consists of the words
       "zero" through "nine," "yes," "no," and "oh." The product is
       language-independent. American English, Australian English,
       Brazilian Portuguese, Canadian French, Castilian Spanish, French,
       German, Italian, Mexican Spanish, Portuguese, Swiss German and
       U.K. English versions are available.
     * VPro/XD(TM) is a discrete or multiword speech recognizer for
       extra-demanding applications and/or vocabularies. This robust
       discrete product recognizes isolated discrete utterances (words or
       very short phrases). VPro/XD utilizes proprietary
       out-of-vocabulary rejection and word-spotting technologies.
       VPro/XD is speaker-independent and includes Talkover capability
       allowing speech-interrupt over prompts. Pre-trained vocabulary
       libraries are available in American English, Australian English,
       Brazilian Portuguese, Canadian French, Castilian Spanish, Central
       American Spanish, German, Italian, Mandarin Chinese, Mexican
       Spanish, Portuguese, Swiss German and UK English. Pre-trained
       vocabularies consisting of voice mail words, voice dialing words,
       call control words, banking, and emergency words are available in
       American English (both cellular and land-line).
     * VPro/RT(TM) is a discrete speech recognizer for rapid training of
       vocabularies in the field. This robust discrete product recognizes
       isolated discrete utterances. Application designers and end-users
       define the vocabulary of their choice and train the system in
       real-time either prior to system start-up, or adapting on-the-fly
       while the system is running live. Vocabularies can be subset, and
       applications involving thousands of words can be developed
       quickly. VPro/RT, which also supports Talkover, is suited to
       speaker-dependent recognition tasks, such as the personal
       directory of names in a voice-activated dailing application.
       VPro/RT is also good for applications that require
       speaker-independent vocabularies to be developed quickly in the
       field or those that require many vocabularies. VPro/RT can also be
       used as a tool for quick prototyping of applications.
     * VProCel consists of speaker-independent VProContinuous, VPro/XD
       and speaker-dependent VPro/RT specifically tuned for the cellular
       environment. The speaker-dependent discrete feature of VProCel
       allows for a user-defined 20-word personal directory, with a
       one-pass enrollment whereby users need only speak their chosen
       commands once. In addition, cellular-ready VPro/XD vocabularies
       consisting of voice-activated dialing command words are also
       available. VProCel is suited to voice-activated dialing
       applications using either digit strings or a listing of words in a
       personal directory.
     * VProSpeller is a recognizer that can determine which name or word
       is being spelled by a caller. Users may spell a string of letters
       (up to 32 letters) in an uninterrupted manner (without prompts or
       beeps between each letter). VProSpeller can recognize confusable
       letters by conducting an automated search of a database of words
       maintained by the application for the best candidates to match.
     * VProPRL Designed for customers who wish to enable VPC speech
       recognition technologies on platforms other than those supported
       by VPro hardware, the VProPRL is a portable recognizer library of
       VProContinuous, VPro/XD and VPro/RT, which can be embedded into a
       wide variety of hardware platforms. It consists of a library of
       object modules which can be linked with a user application or
       task.
     * VPro Hardware Platforms: VPro-42, VPro-84, VPro-88 : The VPro
       platforms are ISA compliant PC/AT boards. Each supports four to
       eight Virtual Speech Processors (VSPs). Each VSP, depending on
       load factors, can handle multiple telephone lines. Application and
       host computers communicate with each of the VSPs as separate
       autonomous units. VPro platforms use Texas Instruments TMS320C31
       microprocessors which provide up to 133 MFLOPS of compute power.
       The platforms can have up to 8 megabytes of memory shared among
       all processors. In addition, each processor has 512K bytes of
       local memory. Both the PEB and MVIP PCM audio buses are supported
       by all VPro platforms.
     * Osprey is a call management software application that performs the
       kinds of telephone related activities typically done by a personal
       assistant, such as answering the phone, screening callers, routing
       calls, and taking and delivering messages. It is an automated
       phone attendant.
     * Price and availability: Contact Voice Processing Corporation
     * Contact: Kelli V. Smith

    Voice Processing Corporation
    1 Main Street, Cambridge, MA, 02142 USA
    Ph: [phone] Fax: [phone]
    e-mail: [e-mail]
    WWW: http://www.vpro.com/



Whisper

   See the new page for Microsoft speech recognition software.
     * Platform: Windows 95 and Windows NT 4.0
     * Description: Command and control recognition.



WildCard Speech Products

     * Platform: Windows 3.1 and Windows 95
     * OfficeTalk for Windows: provides voice commands for dictation,
       navigation, command and control, and formatting for business uses
       of computers. Provides user voice access to a wide variety of
       software applications in office suites from Microsoft,
       Novell/WordPerfect, and Lotus. More information on the WildCard
       OfficeTalk page.
     * LawTalk for Windows: adds features and interfaces that meet the
       specific needs of legal users. More information on the WildCard
       LawTalk page.
     * VoiceCompanion for the Internet: Surf the net using voice
       commands. Controls browsers like Netscape and Microsoft Explorer.
       More information on the VoiceCompanion web page.
     * VoiceCompanion - RemoteAccess: Over the telephone remote access to
       your desktop PC, for voicemail, FAX forwarding and address book
       information. More information on the VoiceCompanion web page.
     * Availability: WildCard Technologies Inc.
       180 West Beaver Creek Road, Richmond Hill, Ontario, Canada L4B 1B4

       Phone: [phone], Fax: [phone]
       Email: [e-mail]
       WWW: http://www.wildcardtech.com/


___________________________________________________________________________

      Q6.6: Speaker Recognition (Verification and Identification)

     * Introduction
     * In the FAQ
     * On the WWW

  Introduction

   Speaker recognition is the process of automatically recognizing who is
   speaking on the basis of individual information included in speech
   signals. It can be divided into Speaker Identification and Speaker
   Verification. Speaker identification determines which registered
   speaker provides a given utterance from amongst a set of known
   speakers. Speaker verification accepts or rejects the identity claim
   of a speaker - is the speaker the person they say they are?

   Speaker recognition technology makes it possible to a the speaker's
   voice to control access to restricted services, for example, phone
   access to banking, database services, shopping or voice mail, and
   access to secure equipment.

   Both technologies require users to "enroll" in the system, that is, to
   give examples of their speech to a system so that it can characterise
   (or learn) their voice patterns.

  In the FAQ:

          * ImagineNation: Voice Activated UnLock Technology
          * Jialong He's Speaker Recognition (Identification) Tool
          * Keyware Biometric Security Products
          * SpeakerKey Voice Verifier from ITT
          * SpeakEZ Voice Print Speaker Verification
          * Voice Control Systems: Speaker Verification Technology

  On the WWW

    Survey of the State of the Art in Human Language Technology
          Report edited by Ronald A. Cole et. al. with a section on
          Speaker Recognition.
          http://www.cse.ogi.edu/CSLU/HLTsurvey/ch1node47.html

    Speaker Identification And Verification: LIMSI Report
          A technical description.
          http://www.limsi.fr/Recherche/TLP/reco/2pg95-sv/2pg95-sv.html

    Long Index of References on Automatic Speaker Verification
          A list of more than 350 papers on speaker verification in text
          or BibTeX format. Provided by G.Matas.
          http://sig.enst.fr/~chollet/ForMehdi/SpRecV1.l_ind.html

    CAVE: Caller Verification in Banking and Telecommunications
          European consortium developing speaker recognition
          technologies.
          http://www.ptt-telecom.nl/cave/

    Hangai Lab demonstrations of speaker verification and speaker
          identification.
          Do it yourself demonstrations:
          http://miya8f05.ee.kagu.sut.ac.jp/study/speech/speech1.html
          http://miya8f05.ee.kagu.sut.ac.jp/study/speech/speech2.html



Voice Activated UnLock Technology (VAULT): ImagineNation

     * Description: Password-based voice verification technology using a
       card to store voice-print data. Introductory information and the
       VAULT FAQ are provided on the ImagineNation WWW pages.
     * Contact: Imagine
       PO Box 212, Swansea, MA 02777, USA
       Ph: [phone]
       Fax: [phone]
       Email: [e-mail]
       WWW: http://www.ImagineNation.com/



Jialong He's Speaker Recognition (Identification) Tool

     * Platform: SUN SPARC (SunOS), PC (MSDOS)
     * Description: This package contains a set of speaker recognition
       research utilities, including Gaussian mixture models, VQ codebook
       designing program and MLP network. They can also be used as
       general classifiers. The utilities are divided into the following
       categories:
          + Feature extraction and dimensional reduction
            cepstrum -- extract features from speech sigals (LPCC, MFCC,
            etc.).
            search -- select effective features (SFS, SBS method).
            randline -- randomize the a sequence, auxiliary utility.
            bin2asc -- binary to ASCII, auxiliary utility.
          + MLP network
            mlptrain -- MLP network training program.
            mlptest -- MLP network test program.
          + VQ codebook training and test programs
            lbglvq -- VQ codebook training program.
            nearest -- VQ codebook test program.
          + Gaussian mixture model (GMM)
            gmmtrain -- GMM training program.
            gmmtest -- GMM test program.
       Note: this is a research tool not a true speaker recognition
       system.
     * Availability: By anonymous ftp:

        MSDOS Version
                UK:
                ftp://svr-ftp.eng.cam.ac.uk/pub/comp.speech/recognition/s
                pkrtool.zip
                Germany:
                ftp://ftp.informatik.uni-ulm.de/pub/NI/jialong/spkrtool.z
                ip

        Sun SPARC version, compiled with GNU C
                UK:
                ftp://svr-ftp.eng.cam.ac.uk/pub/comp.speech/recognition/s
                pkr_sun_v1.tar.gz
                Germany:
                ftp://ftp.informatik.uni-ulm.de/pub/NI/jialong/speaker_su
                n_v1.tar.gz

     * See also: Jialong He's Speech Recognition Research Tool
     * Contact: Jialong He
       email: [e-mail]



Keyware Biometric Security Products

     * Description: VoiceGuardian and S2 Security Server provide
       authentication and access control technologies. An online demo of
       Voice Guardian is available.
     * Contact: Keyware Technologies
       _USA_
       Keyware Technologies
       500 West Cummings Park, Suite 3600, Woburn, MA 01801, USA
       Ph: [phone], Fax: [phone]
       _Belgium_
       Keyware Technologies
       Excelsiorlaan 28-30, 1930 Zaventem, Belgium
       Ph: 32 2 721 4574, Fax: [phone]
       _Email:_ [e-mail]
       _WWW:_ http://www.keywareusa.com/



SpeakerKey Voice Verifier from ITT

     * Platform: Windows/Pentium and Solaris/SPARC
     * Description: SpeakerKey provides over-the-phone voice
       verification. It is configurable for use in a wide range of
       applications.
       SpeakerKey provides a Speaker Verification API (SVAPI).
       SpeakerKey uses two technologies: (1) speaker-independent digit
       recognition using hidden Markov models, (2) speaker verification
       using "Nearest Neighbour Matching with Likelihood Ratio Scoring
       and cohort speakers."
       Dr. Joe Campbell maintains a SpeakerKey FAQ on the WWW. It
       provides a more detailed description of SpeakerKey and discusses
       several speaker verification issues:
       http://www.vitro.bloomington.in.us:8080/~BC/REPORTS/SpeakerKeyFAQ.
       html
     * Requirements: Minimum 60 MHz Pentium (with sound card) or
       SPARCstation 5, plus phone line interface devices.
     * Price: Evaluation kits available from $75. Developer's kits are
       $1500. Run-time licenses are priced from $600 to $10,000 depending
       upon the number of user and/or verifications per hour. Application
       customization is available.
     * Contact: ITT Industries
       Fort Wayne, IN, USA
       Ph: [phone], Fax: [phone]
       Email: [e-mail]



SpeakEZ Voice Print Speaker Verification

     * Description: Designed to prevent cell phone theft and cloning
       fraud by comparing the cellular caller's statement of a
       pass-phrase to a stored digital "voice print" of the authorized
       subscriber. If the caller's voice patterns do not match the stored
       voice print, service will be denied or the caller will be referred
       to operator assistance for further validation processing. Features
       include:
          + Customer selected password.
          + Vocabulary and language independent.
          + No special hardware required by customer.
          + Multiple delivery options.
     * Contact: T-NETIX, Inc.
       6675 South Kenton Street Englewood, CO 80111 USA
       Phone: [phone], Fax: [phone]
       WWW: http://www.t-netix.com/



Voice Control Systems: Speaker Verification Technology

     * Description: SpeechPrint ID technology provides language
       independent speaker verification. Features:
          + Multiple speech input formats
          + Operates over various microphones or the telephone network
          + Can can be used in conjunction with discrete and continuous
            recognition
          + Robust against background noise and spurious telephone
            channel noise
       For more information on features, hardware and software
       requirements, pricing and availability, contact Voice Control
       Systems, Inc. or visit their the VCS WWW site or the SpeechPrint
       ID WWW page.
     * See also: VCS speech recognition products in Q6.5.
     * Contact: Voice Control Systems, Inc.
       14140 Midway Rd., Dallas, Tx. 75244, USA
       Ph: [phone], Fax: [phone]
       Email: [e-mail]
       WWW: http://www.voicecontrol.com/


___________________________________________________________________________

                    Q6.7: Integrated Speech Products

   This section lists those products which integrate different speech
   technologies into a single user package. For example, speech
   recognition and speech synthesis can be combined to provide a dialog
   management system. Strictly speaking, this doesn't really belong under
   in Section 6 (Speech Recognition) but since these products all include
   speech recognition, it seems a reasonable place to put it for now!

  In the FAQ...

          * SpeechWorksfrom Applied Language Technologies, Inc.
          * Nortel Speech Technology Products



SpeechWorksfrom Applied Language Technologies, Inc.

     * Description: SpeechWorks and companion products provide advanced
       speech recognition technology for the telephony market.
       SpeechWorks can be used by developers to "speech-enable" call
       center, messaging, enhanced services, and other types of
       applications. The three major system modules - SpeechWorks,
       DialogModules and SpeechBuilder - are described below. More
       detailed information is available from the Applied Language
       Technologies home page.
       ALTech develops and markets speech understanding software which
       provides large vocabulary, speaker-independent, phonetic speech
       recognition. ALTech's software contains a comprehensive set of
       features for speech-enabling telephone-based transactions and
       services. SpeechWorks is based on technology licensed from the
       Spoken Language Systems Group at the Massachusetts Institute of
       Technology.
     * SpeechWorks: provides the core speech recognition capabilities.
       Features include:
          + Phonetic segment-based, speaker-independent, large
            vocabulary, continuous speech recognition
          + Real-time vocabulary generation directly from text
          + Database integration
          + "Barge-in" capability
          + Adaptive channel normalization
          + "n-best" output and associated confidence scores
          + Support for multiple languages
          + Software-only or DSP-based implementations
          + Support for multiple platforms and operating systems (e.g.,
            SCO UNIX, WindowsNT, etc.)
     * DialogModules: manage the "conversation" between the system and
       the caller within an application. They provide high-level
       application building blocks which enable developers to quickly and
       easily add speech interfaces to computer telephony applications.
       Each DialogModule accomplishes a particular task within an
       application, ranging from "simple" tasks such as capturing a
       yes/no response or a phone number, to more complex tasks such as
       capturing credit card information or name and address information.

       DialogModules provide "out-of-the-box" functionality. They contain
       pre-built grammars, user-interface design, internal call flow and
       error recovery routines, parameters for customization and a set of
       C++ class libraries and C APIs.
     * SpeechBuilder: provides tools for customizing the DialogModules
       and for developing and maintaining applications. A GUI-based
       Vocabulary Editor provides the ability to generate and maintain
       vocabulary or word lists. Pronunciations can be generated
       automatically using the built-in dictionary or can be
       automatically generated using a set of text-to-phoneme rules.
     * Product Bundles: are available which combine SpeechWorks and
       multiple DialogModules into application templates for a set of
       generic application categories.
          + SpeechForms SpeechForms provides an interactive method for
            entering data over the phone, such as ordering products,
            filling out surveys and completing registration forms.
            Typical applications include: order entry, reservations,
            catalog and literature requests, catalog shopping,
            subscriptions, change of service, claims, credit card
            activation, home banking, stock transactions, and warranty
            reservations.
          + SpeechQuery SpeechQuery is used to deliver information in
            response to voice requests over the phone, such as airline
            information, product delivery status and retirement benefit
            information. Typical applications include: order status,
            product information, account balance, flight status, movie
            listings, job listings, stock quotes, guide
            services,classified ads, claims status, dealer locator
            services, and technical support.
          + SpeechAgent SpeechAgent provides a set of modules for
            automating telephone-based voice messaging applications, such
            as integrated messaging, single-number services and
            voice-dialing. Typical applications include: voice messaging,
            voice dialing, auto attendant, address book access, email
            access, and scheduling.
     * Platform: Platforms and Operating systems: ALTech's software can
       be deployed on industry-standard hardware platforms and operating
       systems including: Sun SPARC-based systems running SunOS or
       Solaris, IBM RS/6000s running AIX, HP systems running HP-UX, and
       486/Pentium-based PCs and servers running Windows, WindowsNT, SCO
       UNIX, or Solaris. ALTech's systems are designed to run all or some
       of the software on a digital signal processor.
     * Availability: contact ALTech for licensing information.
     * Contact: Applied Language Technologies, Inc.
       215 First Street, Cambridge, MA 02142
       Ph: 617-225-0012, Fax: [phone]
       Email: to Alisa Moyer: [e-mail]
       WWW: http://www.altech.com/



Nortel Speech Technology Products

     * Nortel's AudioGram Delivery Service (ADS):
       When a busy or no answer condition is encountered, an intercept
       message offers ADS, which provides a service to the calling party
       by taking a message automatically. ADS records the caller's
       message and attempts delivery repeatedly if needed until the
       message is delivered. ADS is comprised of four independent
       services: 0+, 1+ and Local, Intentional, and Millenium AudioGram.
       ADS services utilize Nortel's Flexible Voice Recognition (FVR)
       voice-processing capabilities. ADS features include:
          + Cost-saving common service platform (NAV)
          + Builds upon existing network investment in toll
            infrastructure capabilities of AABS (Automated Alternate
            Billing Service)
          + Leverages the capabilities of existing TOPS (Traffic Operator
            Position System) attendants.
       More information: is available on the Nortel Multimedia Network
       Applications WWW page for AudioGram Delivery Service.
     * Nortel's Voice-Activated Auto Attendant (VAAA):
       Replaces touch tone menu with easy-to-use voice interface. Geared
       to businesses and corporations to provide more effective
       management of incoming customer calls. Residing on the Network
       Applications Vehicle (NAV) platform, VAAA uses Flexible Vocabulary
       Recognition (speaker-independent) technology to recognize spoken
       words, and directs calls accordingly. Other features include:
          + Cost-saving common service platform (NAV)
          + Serves DTMF and rotary dial callers.
          + Handles incoming calls for all corporate users (Centrex, PBX,
            or key systems)
       More information: is available on the Nortel Multimedia Network
       Applications WWW page for Voice-Activated Auto Attendant.
     * Nortel's Voice-Activated Dialing (VAD):
       Phoneme-based speech dialing capabilities provided through
       speaker-trained and speaker-independent technologies. Residing on
       the Network Applications Vehicle (NAV) platform, VAD enables
       subscribers to dial using speech, as well as to create and
       customize personal telephone directories. Other features include:
          + Cost-saving common service platform (NAV)
          + Speech playback and Text-to-speech synthesis
          + Dual Language capability (optional)
          + Speech Recording
          + Canadian French speechware (optional, prompts and FVR)
          + Spanish speechware (optional, prompts and FVR)
          + 75-name VAD directory size
          + Word-spotting
          + DTMF tone detection
          + Directory sharing
          + Scalable service deployment
          + Talk-through
       More information: is available on the Nortel Multimedia Network
       Applications WWW page for Voice-Activated Dialing.
     * Nortel's Voice-Activated Premier Dialing (VAPD):
       Enables businesses to take advantage of the public network
       directories to stimulate customer calls. Residing on the Network
       Applications Vehicle (NAV) platform, VAPD uses Flexible Vocabulary
       Recognition (speaker-independent) technology to recognize business
       names, and routes calls to the appropriate business entity. VAPD
       promotes cost savings by utilizing a common service platform, the
       Network Applications Vehicle (NAV). It services DTMF callers as
       well as rotary dialers, and handles incoming calls for all
       corporate users: Centrex, PBX, and key systems. More information:
       is available on the Nortel Multimedia Network Applications WWW
       page for Voice-Activated Premier Dialing.
     * Platform: This speech-based service operates on the Network
       Applications Vehicle (NAV) platform. NAV is a multi-application,
       digital signal processing platform supporting both speech- and
       display-based applications. The NAV platform provides the speech
       recognition capabilities and application logic used by NAV
       features an open, modular hardware architecture and flexible
       software design. Other features include:
          + Scalable hardware - from 24 to over 2000 ports per NAV node;
            1 to 24 independent application shelves per node
          + Powerful speech processing - speaker-independent and
            speaker-trained speech processing support
          + Reliability - N+1, N+M, and 2N redundancy
          + Central Management - access via graphical user interface to
            remote connections
     * See Also: Nortel Feature Planning Guide, reference number
       50004.11; NAV Applications and Planning Guide, reference number
       50118.16.
       Nortel's Multimedia web pages:
       http://www.nortel.com/entprods/multimedia/
     * Contact: NORTEL
       Multimedia Communications Systems Division
       Multimedia Network Applications
       1000 Park Forty Plaza
       Durham, NC 27713 USA
       Ph: 1-800-4NORTEL
       WWW: http://www.nortel.com/entprods/multimedia/


___________________________________________________________________________

   Copyright (c) 1993-6 by Andrew Hunt, all rights reserved.
   This FAQ may be posted to any USENET newsgroup, on-line service, or BBS as
   long as it is posted in its entirety and includes this copyright statement.
   This FAQ may not be distributed for financial gain.
   This FAQ may not be included in any collections or compilations
   without express permission from the author.



 ---

Andrew Hunt
Speech Applications Group
Sun Microsystems Laboratories       Ph:  [phone]
2 Elizabeth Drive, MS UCHL03-207    Fax: [phone]
Chelmsford, MA 01824, USA           Email: [e-mail]