Emy is a versatile Speech Synthesizer using software that emulates the famous TMS5220 speech chip. Emy can be seen as the big brother of the Talko: it has the same speech engine but pushed to the max! Every aspect of the speech engine can now be tweaked to alter the sound. Furthermore EMY has the ability to host a some different hardware synthesizers on it’s back via the use of a mikroBUS port (see Polaxis website for details)) EMY also adds an OLED screen and SD card storage for LPC, allowing the user to customize their very own soundscape.
Build Document and firmware files can be found here: https://www.polaxis.be/emy-the-versatile-eurorack-speech-synthesizer/
Features
- LPC data are read from the SD card so an infinite vocabulary can be loaded
- Sound and vocabulary can be produced by concatenating allophones and prosody markers from the text file to affect rate, duration, and pitch. No limits here!
- The OLED crisp display allows browsing amongst the files and the lines within files to pick the sound the user wants to generate.
- Speech rendering can be tweaked in real-time to affect, rate, stretch, bend, pitch and energy.
- All the potentiometer have CV entries attaches to them
- Emy produces sounds in 3 major modes: Speech, Repeat, and VCO.
- In Speech mode, the speech starts with a gate signal and complete before waiting for a new gate signal. The speech has the priority.
- In Repeat mode, the speech starts and stops with the gate signal going high or low. The gate has the priority and the speech repeats while the gate is high. This mode is very useful to create crazy rhythms.
- In VCO mode, the LPC engine loops while the gate is high, producing steady notes.
- The firmware can be updated via the onboard USB port or via the SD card
Technical Details
- 16 hp
- micro SD card reader
- Diode for reverse polarity protection on power lines
- Consumption : +12V 60mA / -12V 18 mA
- Cortex-M0 ARM processor
- All inputs: 100k impedance, 12-bit ADC.
- CV control designed for 0-5 V entries
- aux out signal 5V
- OLED display
- mikroBUS host
- Output level 8 Vpp
- A USB port for communication, firmware updates and USB keyboard text entry