Re: MiNT-able Speech

["Peter Ross" <pross@soho.ios.com>]

Here is some information about a Free network vocal chat utility.  It
sounds good for Falcon users or Atari users with audio digitizers.




Voicechat allows transferring bidirectional audio data in almost real time
over a TCP/IP network such as the Internet. It is meant for two-person
voice
conversations, much like the telephone.

Voicechat requires a Unix system with a sound device and a network
connection. The program uses GSM compression (with a free GSM library) and
a
simple silence-detection algorithm to compress the data sent over the
network; the bandwidth it uses is about 1400 bytes per second in normal
speech (max. 1700 cps plus TCP/IP headers). It should work pretty well in
slower-bandwidth networks too, but the pauses in silent parts of speech
become longer than they should be.

Voicechat also supports text conversation, much like the common Unix talk.
Text and voice work at the same time, bidirectionally.

Of i386/i486 machines, the GSM compression requires a reasonably fast
machine (a 486-33 should work, maybe slower ones too). Sound can't be
recorded and played at the same time unless your soundcard and its driver
supports it (VoxWare doesn't, yet).

Voicechat is distributed under the GNU General Public License, and thus is
free software and includes source code.

The current version has been tested on Linux only; ports to other Unix
systems should be pretty easy. Voicechat uses and requires ncurses and the
gsm library (libgsm).

Riku Saikkonen
rjs@spider.compart.fi

The LSM entry:

Begin3
Title:          voicechat
Version:        0.40 beta
Entered-date:   29OCT95
Description:    Two-person bidirectional voice (and text) chat via a
                small-bandwidth TCP/IP network.
Keywords:       voice chat talk audio TCP/IP network
Author:         rjs@spider.compart.fi (Riku Saikkonen)
Primary-site:   sunsite.unc.edu /pub/Linux/apps/sound/talk
                21273 voicechat-0.40-beta.tar.gz
Alternate-site: isil.lloke.dna.fi /pub/rjs-dist
Platform:       Linux and probably other Unices. Requires a sound card,
                ncurses, and the GSM compression library (gsm-1.0.tar.gz),
                and a machine at least about the speed of a 486-33.
Copying-policy: GPL
End

Checksums for voicechat-0.40-beta.tar (112640 bytes):
MD5 (voicechat-0.40-beta.tar) = 2cf98bf179376f3a414528fe85d374d4
GNU sum: 15862   110