MEA8000SIM

A software simulator for the MEA8000 speech synthesis chip, available as a speech device for various 80's computers

Installation

A C compiler and make command should be enough.

You will also need the lib libsndfile on your system.

$ make
gcc -c -o main.o main.c -Wall
gcc -c -o bin.o bin.c -Wall
gcc -c -o filter.o filter.c -Wall
gcc -c -o synth.o synth.c -Wall
gcc -c -o speak.o speak.c -Wall
gcc -o mea8000sim main.o bin.o filter.o synth.o speak.o -Wall -lm -lsndfile

$

Usage/Examples

$ ./mea8000sim -h
mea8000sim is a speech synthesis program.
	 -b <binfile>
	 -n <numsample>
	 -o <output_wav_file>
	 -s <string to speech>
	 -h general help
	 -H speak module help

Data files with complete sentences

The file demo_TO.bin is provided as an example. It comes from the demonstation program of the cartridge 'Cedic - Synthétiseur de paroles' for the Thomson T07 computer.

$ ./mea8000sim -b demo_TO.bin -n 1 -o demo_TO_sample1.wav
File demo_TO.bin, read 6288 bytes.
Sample 1 : start offset 51, length 497.
Output file demo_TO_sample1.wav written.
$

Phonemes

The file Phoneme4_2.bin contains french phonemes. You have to enter the sentences with special codes representing each sound. The mapping is available with the -H option :

$ ./mea8000sim -H
available keys :
a e[lE] i o u &[è] *[é] E[eu] w[ou] A[en] I[un] O[on] W[oi] b d g[gu] j k l m
n p R[Roule] r[bonjouR] s t v z $[ch] N[gn] @[ail] #[eil] %[euil] <[ien] >[oin] 0[Or]
;[silence 32ms] .[silence 64ms]

Example :

$ ./mea8000sim -b Phoneme4_2.bin -s "bOjwR....je.sui.I.pRogRam.de.sInt&z.vokal.." -o bonjour.wav
Data file Phoneme4_2.bin, read 1472 bytes.
Output file bonjour.wav written.

Optimizations

The code is not particularly optimized, the idea was more to understand how the chip works.

The filter code is borrowed from the Mame implementation , see https://github.com/mamedev/mame/blob/master/src/devices/sound/mea8000.cpp

I'm not sure this code matches what happens in the MEA8000 chip, but I didn't manage to make it work by implementing it as decribed in the Philips Application Note (see Appendix below).

License

Copyright (c) 2023 Laurent FRANCOISE . All rights reserved.

This project is released under the GNU Public License.

Appendix

The application note from Philips http://zx81.ordi5.free.fr/vtr/download/MEA8000-2.pdf

General information on the MEA8000 chip https://www.cpcwiki.eu/index.php/MEA8000

More data files here https://forum.system-cfg.com/viewtopic.php?t=12940 (look for datas.zip)

A book in french related to this chip http://dcmoto.free.fr/documentation/parole_micros/index.html