SiTel offers high-quality Text To Speech on DECT phones

12th March 2009

ES Admin

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SiTel Semiconductor has announced the availability of a natural-sound Text To Speech software engine for its latest DECT chipsets. The engine runs on SiTel’s SC14450 DECT baseband processor and SC1448x family of single-chip DECT / CAT-iq solutions, using only 1.2 Mbytes of external serial Flash memory and minimal processor overhead. As the external memory can also be used for storing answer-machine messages, manufacturers can incorporate Text To Speech into their designs with no additional hardware costs.

Developed by Philips Applied Technologies, this high-quality Text To Speech engine is optimized for interpreting names but can convert any text data into spoken words. It uses an 8 kHz audio bandwidth to deliver a very clear and natural-sounding voice. Customers can choose between a number of languages including U.S. English and Spanish.

“Our engineers, together with engineers from SiTel, succeeded in porting our high-quality, natural-sound Text To Speech engine onto SiTel’s DECT chipsets,” said Wim van der Ligt, Marketing Manager at Philips Applied Technologies. “We are pleased that these advanced algorithms, which were developed for high-quality applications, are now running on the powerful embedded processor in SiTel’s DECT chipsets.”

“Text To Speech is an exciting new application that improves accessibility for phone users, and offers manufacturers a great way to differentiate their products in this busy marketplace,” said René Kohlmann, Chief Technology Officer at SiTel. “We’re delighted that, working with Philips Applied Technology, we were able to bring high-quality Text To Speech functionality to the DECT market.”

A typical application for the engine would be to enable DECT or CAT-iq handsets to speak the caller identification information they receive. As CAT-iq always transmits the caller’s name, not just their number, receivers would be able to hear who is calling even before picking up the phone.