FUQ (eff -yu - cue) - FAQ's with an EDGE

Tagged As: Voice Synth

Question:
I'm visually impaired and am considering getting a voice synth - internal or external unit - for use as a screen reader. However, I also want excellent wavetable sound and midi (GM, XG also if possible). I do some hard disk recording on occasion as well. I'd like SoundBlaster compatability too. In the past I had done all this with multiple cards (CardD+, MQX32m midi interface, Roland XP-50 synth keyboard, SoundBlaster etc.) I now want a new Pentium II 333 but it only has 2 ISA slots. Is there a single card (other than SB) or an external module that I should look at.

Answer:
Hmm, you won't get anything that good from Creative - even their top of the range AWE 64 GOLD soundfont stuff is fairly average when compared to a Yamaha XG card, and they have taken the MPU ports off most of their cards (which they never buffered properly anyhow). However you can't beat them for the SB compatability (unsurprisingly). There is supposed to be a PCI version of the Soundblaster 16 card out in the next few months - that might just give you enough room to keep the other two PCI cards. Take a look at the Videologic Apocalypse 5D, or the Diamond Monster Sound (I think these might be Win95 only). More info on the relevent newsgroups or compnay web servers http://www.vidologic.com and http://www.diamondmm.com (if I remember correctly).