Covox Speech Thing
Posted: 22 Sep 2020 13:16
As perhaps the biggest fan of Thalion games, in particular ones with music by Jochen "MadMax" Hippel I've been wanting to try the games he wrote which had support for the Covox Speech Thing.
For those of you who don't know this is an external LPT DAC which as the name sounds connects to the parallel port and the programmer streams the digital audio data to the parallel port instead of faking sample playback with the YM.
And if you were inclined to do so you can still buy them (or rather clones of them) today HERE or they are really easy to make as they are just an R2R ladder DAC.
While I never saw one in the wild in the old days, they must have been popular as several of applications and demos have support for the LPT DAC. (AudioSculpture, NoiseTracker, TCBTracker, ULM demos, B.A.C. demos etc. etc.)
The author of SCUMMVM Lite (being developed today) has said he was considering Covox Speech Thing support
Now two of my favourite games "Wings of Death" and the sequel (not officially a Thalion game) "Lethal Xcess" both support an LPT DAC (Ext Digital) in the main menu.
I was going create videos showing the sound differences between STF(M) PSG and the LPT DAC when I discovered (only a few months ago) another Atari Scener TPAU of B.A.C. has already done it (May 2020)!!
It's just a nice bit of FUN, something different if you've not come across it.
Wings of Death
Lethal Xcess
B.A.C. demo
For those of you who don't know this is an external LPT DAC which as the name sounds connects to the parallel port and the programmer streams the digital audio data to the parallel port instead of faking sample playback with the YM.
And if you were inclined to do so you can still buy them (or rather clones of them) today HERE or they are really easy to make as they are just an R2R ladder DAC.
While I never saw one in the wild in the old days, they must have been popular as several of applications and demos have support for the LPT DAC. (AudioSculpture, NoiseTracker, TCBTracker, ULM demos, B.A.C. demos etc. etc.)
The author of SCUMMVM Lite (being developed today) has said he was considering Covox Speech Thing support
Now two of my favourite games "Wings of Death" and the sequel (not officially a Thalion game) "Lethal Xcess" both support an LPT DAC (Ext Digital) in the main menu.
I was going create videos showing the sound differences between STF(M) PSG and the LPT DAC when I discovered (only a few months ago) another Atari Scener TPAU of B.A.C. has already done it (May 2020)!!
It's just a nice bit of FUN, something different if you've not come across it.
Wings of Death
Lethal Xcess
B.A.C. demo