CIRCLE WITH A DOT

@BorrisInABox Yes, unfortunately.

For anyone who uses Windows Media Player and likes tracker music, I just released something that you might find slightly useful. A DirectShow filter that wraps the DUMB (Dynamic Universal Music Bibliotheque) module player library. It is important to note that the underlying module player was last updated in 2005, so there will be inaccuracies with some modules. The supported tracker formats are MOD, IT, S3M, and XM.
Binaries for X86 desktop Windows and ARMV4 Windows CE can be found here: https://datajake.braillescreen.net/OtherSoftware/Audio/dumb_dsf.zip.
The source code can be found at https://datajake.braillescreen.net/OtherSoftware/Audio/dumb_dsf-src.7z.

@rommix0 If my theory about the engine using MBROLA as a backend is correct, what we are actually hearing are the building blocks for a diphone based voice. When I listened to the clip you posted, it sounded familiar, and after listening to the clip of the synth itself, I remembered listening to the raw data of EN1 a while back.

@rommix0 I wish I was the person I was before I heard the Japanese version of BeSTspeech.
In all seriousness though, thanks for this.

@rommix0 Would you be able to provide some leads? I have an external hard drive full of many sound effect libraries.

@rommix0 True.
I have definitely encountered the sound effect used as the basis for the Boing voice in other places.

@rommix0 The click at the start of the samples is most likely a header interpreted as sound.
It is interesting to think that a formant TTS engine is essentially a sophisticated vocoder.

@mckensie @rommix0 The file that was extracted actually results in worse pronunciations. The smaller file size made me think that was going to be the case, and indeed it was.

@rommix0 @BorrisInABox How did you figure out how to extract Mac resource forks on Windows?

@rommix0 Would you be able to extract the MacinTalk 3 dictionary file from MacOS 8 or 9? Curious if that data is compatible with the WinTalker code.

@menelion I agree. I can only imagine how broken things would be if we still relied on many different code pages in the modern era. Whenever I encounter character encoding errors, I usually reread a 2003 article on the subject. https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2003/10/08/the-absolute-minimum-every-software-developer-absolutely-positively-must-know-about-unicode-and-character-sets-no-excuses

I was today years old when I learned that developers of SAPI4 engines had to implement two interfaces, one for ANSI and another for Unicode. This is most likely one of the many reasons new SAPI4 engines stopped being made, as developers had to essentially write many things twice.

@trison Admittedly this synth isn't great for daily screen reader use especially in it's raw form, as it's pronunciation and number processing leave a lot to be desired. It could be useful in other applications though.

@cubic @alexchapman No, the SAPI5.1 runtime isn't included in the 32-bit installer.

@alexchapman I would actually recommend installing both, as most applications that use SAPI are 32-bit.

@alexchapman They are setup files that will run on Windows XP or later. I believe the 32-bit version will also run on Windows 2000.

WinTalker SAPI5 is now available. https://datajake.braillescreen.net/TTS/SAPI/Various/Engines/WinTalkerSAPI5.zip

An updated WinTalker NVDA addon is available. Ordinal expansion is now implemented, and is enabled by default.
https://datajake.braillescreen.net/TTS/SynthesizersForNVDA/WinTalker.nvda-addon

@rommix0 To add to the list of software based formant synthesizers: Eloquence, Orpheus, PrimoVox, MacinTalk 3, and eSpeak.

@ppatel It's definitely a novelty synth.