Software Automatic Mouth, or SAM, was a speech synthesis program for the early personal computers; developed and sold by Don’t Ask Software. The program was available for non-Macintosh Apple computers (including the Apple II, and the Lisa), various Atari models and the Commodore 64. Prices ranged from about USD$50 to $200. The Apple version preferred additional hardware that contained DACs, although it could instead use the computer's one-bit audio output (with the addition of much distortion) if the card was not present. The Atari made use of the embedded POKEY audio chip. Speech playback on the Atari normally disabled interrupt requests and shut down the ANTIC chip during vocal output. The audible output is extremely distorted speech when the screen is on. The Commodore 64 made use of the 64's embedded SID audio chip.
SAM, released in 1982, was the first commercial all-software voice synthesis program. It was later used as the basis for Macintalk.
SAM was featured in the recent online game Peasant's Quest, a parody of 1980s adventure games, where it was used to produce the speech of the ending boss Trogdor.
Famous quotes containing the words automatic and/or mouth:
“Predictions of the future are never anything but projections of present automatic processes and procedures, that is, of occurrences that are likely to come to pass if men do not act and if nothing unexpected happens; every action, for better or worse, and every accident necessarily destroys the whole pattern in whose frame the prediction moves and where it finds its evidence.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)
“Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you—trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and as I may say, the whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)