Emic damaged? or other cause of garbled speech?

Zoot

I've been using a (male) Emic TTS for the last six weeks or so with no problems.

Last night, for no apparent reason (and without having changed wiring nor code) I am getting either dropped, static-y or garbled phonemes. At first I thought maybe it was noise being induced in the audio out to the 8ohm speaker, but:

- I changed speakers and speaker wire -- same thing

- when I use the Ain pin to amplify freqouts from my Stamp, it sounds fine (so I don't think it's the on-board amp nor the speaker nor wiring)

It seems to consistently drop/static-ify/garble certain phonemes. Is it possible that the source audio files burned on the chip are corrupted??? I haven't written any new abbreviations or anything.

Other possibilities? If it is damaged, is it possible to exchange it or have it repaired???? Frustrated to say the least

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When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. -- HST

Chris Savage

Zoot,

Does it do this is you use the Emic_TTS code from our website? Have you tried disconnecting everything and re-wiring it in case there’s a loose wire somewhere? Also, are you using the RESET line on the module in your code?

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Chris Savage
Parallax Tech Support

Zoot

Yes, yes and yes. I just ran some more tests -- different power supply, different speaker, different wire, simpler and more complex code. Ran EmicTTS.bs2 without change, etc. Here's what I can definitively report --

- certain phonemes (and only certain phonemes) produce either a very soft white noise or very loud static. Other phonemes work fine. For example "I" (sounds like: "eye") produces basically a silence (like the phoneme just drops out). "Qu" (sounds like: "kwa") and hard "G"s produce horrible loud static. There are a few others like this, but I haven't tested all the phonemes.

Suggestions? Like I said, it was fine until... it wasn't. If I had dropped a screwdriver into the works and shorted out something, or spilled my coffee, etc, I could at least chalk it up to human error, but I didn't :-(

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When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. -- HST

Zoot

A few more notes that may or may not be helpful.

Example: Say, "I am great" -- produced soft white noise silence and then just "great" -- you can hear the pause where "I am" should be.

Example: Say, "great am I" -- produces "great" followed by soft white noise silence.

The only think I haven't tried is hooking up the module to different pins on my BS2p40, but I do get good communication with the Emic (it speaks the data I send, or tries to, gives me good "OK"s, etc).

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When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. -- HST

Chris Savage

Zoot,

Without testing the Emic, if I had to guess I would say it almost sounds like maybe one of the pins to the Winbond chip may have come loose. I don’t know that you could damage the internal sounds, but I suppose it would be possible. I don’t know if they’re in ROM or EEPROM. Who did you get the module from, one of our distributors?

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Chris Savage
Parallax Tech Support

Zoot

I inspected the board pretty carefully looking for something like that. It looks OK, but SMD is not my thing, and those pins are tiny.

Would this explain why only some phonemes (consistently) get mangled and everything else works perfectly? Are some of the pins used to "address" given phonemes or something?

In any case, the module was purchased right from the Parallax website (by my father as a gift -- he sent it to me). I have the Parallax packing slip/order number/etc.

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When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. -- HST

Chris Savage

Zoot,

Please contact us directly via phone or e-mail to support@parallax.com to arrange to have it sent in for testing and possible replacement. Take care.

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Chris Savage
Parallax Tech Support

Zoot

I'll do that. Thanks Chris.

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When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. -- HST