Author Topic: Holy shit, listen to this: Voder-1939, the worlds first electronic voice synthes  (Read 2335 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline BrianHGTopic starter

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 8275
  • Country: ca
    • LinkedIn
The Voder: 1939, the worlds first electronic voice synthesizer:



 

Offline tooki

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 13156
  • Country: ch
It’s not called the “Voder 1939”, it’s the Voder, which happened to be made in 1939.

I wanna say this was discussed within some other thread on here not terribly long ago. (Edit: I remember now, it’s in the discussion of The 8-Bit Guy’s crappy video on speech synthesis.)
 

Offline edy

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 2387
  • Country: ca
    • DevHackMod Channel
That's pretty cool. I wonder if they released any schematics or if it is possible to buy or build a kit using some modern chips to do the same thing? I'd love to put something together but instead of having to learn how to operate the keys precisely for 1 year of constant practice, feed it some text file and run it via Arduino.
YouTube: www.devhackmod.com LBRY: https://lbry.tv/@winegaming:b Bandcamp Music Link
"Ye cannae change the laws of physics, captain" - Scotty
 

Offline Cyberdragon

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 2676
  • Country: us
I'd still build the whole thing outta tubes. ;D Should just be plain audio tubes so cheap chinese ones should work just fine. But yeah, an alternative method of input such as computer control would be necessary for us noobs to use it.

Also, is this the origin of the modern synthesizer instrument the "vocoder"?
*BZZZZZZAAAAAP*
Voltamort strikes again!
Explodingus - someone who frequently causes accidental explosions
 

Offline BrianHGTopic starter

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 8275
  • Country: ca
    • LinkedIn
I'd still build the whole thing outta tubes. ;D Should just be plain audio tubes so cheap chinese ones should work just fine. But yeah, an alternative method of input such as computer control would be necessary for us noobs to use it.

Also, is this the origin of the modern synthesizer instrument the "vocoder"?
Well, it was done with a few transistors, however, you can convert it to tubes as it is only 3 or 4 oscillators and a noise generator.
See here: https://beatriceco.com/bti/porticus/bell/belllabs_kits_ss.html
Full description and schematic in here: https://beatriceco.com/bti/porticus/bell/pdf/speechsynthesis.pdf
 

Offline tooki

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 13156
  • Country: ch
I'd still build the whole thing outta tubes. ;D Should just be plain audio tubes so cheap chinese ones should work just fine. But yeah, an alternative method of input such as computer control would be necessary for us noobs to use it.

Also, is this the origin of the modern synthesizer instrument the "vocoder"?
Not precisely. The vocoder instrument is derived from the vocoder from telephony, of which the Voder was a tech demo of one part of the system. Read the wiki article about the vocoder, and google SIGSALY.
 

Offline tooki

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 13156
  • Country: ch
I'd still build the whole thing outta tubes. ;D Should just be plain audio tubes so cheap chinese ones should work just fine. But yeah, an alternative method of input such as computer control would be necessary for us noobs to use it.

Also, is this the origin of the modern synthesizer instrument the "vocoder"?
Well, it was done with a few transistors, however, you can convert it to tubes as it is only 3 or 4 oscillators and a noise generator.
See here: https://beatriceco.com/bti/porticus/bell/belllabs_kits_ss.html
Full description and schematic in here: https://beatriceco.com/bti/porticus/bell/pdf/speechsynthesis.pdf
Well the 1939 Voder certainly wasn’t made with transistors, given that they hadn’t yet been invented in 1939...
 

Online RoGeorge

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 7012
  • Country: ro
Note that they first say it using human voice (thus setting in your mind the expectation for what the Vocoder sounds will try to speak), then do some noises with the Vocoder, noises resembling the same words as the ones pronounced before in human voice.  It's your own brain what makes it feels like speech.  Without hearing it in human voice first, you wont understand much (if at all) from what the Vocoder voice is trying to say.  Except maybe for the cow "mooo", which was pretty accurate.  ;D

Even so, given the technology of those times, the results were impressive.   :-+
 
The following users thanked this post: apis, newbrain

Offline T3sl4co1l

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 22436
  • Country: us
  • Expert, Analog Electronics, PCB Layout, EMC
    • Seven Transistor Labs
As a poor Theremin player myself, I can appreciate how blindingly hard that thing must've been to operate.  Holey moley! :o

Tim
Seven Transistor Labs, LLC
Electronic design, from concept to prototype.
Bringing a project to life?  Send me a message!
 

Offline Red Squirrel

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 2757
  • Country: ca
Kinda reminds me of HAL9000.  ;D
 

Offline MT

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 1687
  • Country: aq
The original 1939 voder film


This "thing" was actually invented in early 1700, all mechanical but yet synthetic speach.



 

Offline MichaelWeaser

  • Newbie
  • Posts: 1
  • Country: us
Note that they first say it using human voice (thus setting in your mind the expectation for what the Vocoder sounds will try to speak), then do some noises with the Vocoder, noises resembling the same words as the ones pronounced before in human voice.  It's your own brain what makes it feels like speech.  Without hearing it in human voice first, you wont understand much (if at all) from what the Vocoder voice is trying to say.  Except maybe for the cow "mooo", which was pretty accurate.  ;D

Even so, given the technology of those times, the results were impressive.   :-+

There is new information about how the ladies where trained to play it. After training was basically over, after they have learned what keys made what sounds and what order you had to press the keys to get a certain sound , they practiced a lot right before the demonstration of it at the world's fair. Basically the way the 1 year training worked is the first 6 months was learning what keys made what sounds and putting the sounds together to make a word and saying basic sentences, Then the Last 6 months was just practice. The way the practice went is the ladies could only talk to each other through the Voder. During practice no human could speak at all. So obviously there was no human during practice saying what the voder was going to say right before it was played on the Voder.  So I do believe that the Voder was intelligible enough to not need a human saying what was going to be played on the voder.


Another thing , Yes you can easily make your own Voder using a bank of 10 audio filters and here is a video of a somewhat working clone :
 
The following users thanked this post: Trader


Share me

Digg  Facebook  SlashDot  Delicious  Technorati  Twitter  Google  Yahoo
Smf