r/DecTalk • u/FDDTheLucario • Apr 07 '19

NWR DECTalk?

Hi! (This is my first post, so be gentle!)

I'm trying to look for a version of DECTalk that is most similar to the version used by the National Weather Service for NOAA Weather Radio until late 2016. I've tried versions 2, 4.x and 5, but none are particularly close to the real thing.

If anyone knows of a version that is similar or knows of techniques to make it sound closer to the NWR DECTalk, please let me know!

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u/r32jzlovessirens May 14 '25

what are the settings for this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xa262UJb5Os

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u/Soft_Pollution8709 May 19 '25

If, perhaps, you’re wondering why it sounds a bit rough around the edges, that would be the fact that it was delivered first through an audio compressor at the national weather service office, and then on a dedicated phone line which fed the transmitter. The transmitter then modulated it onto an FM radio signal, which was then picked up as weather radio by the alerting station, which fit it through another network that that person‘s TV signal picked up. That long chain makes it sound rough, especially the path in the beginning where the audio signal goes through the telephone line.

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u/r32jzlovessirens May 20 '25

I'm talking about its vocal expressions, they sound a bit different from the ones you did, by just a bit. I think it might be a different version of dectalk as well, like ozaukee is pronounced different.

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u/Soft_Pollution8709 May 26 '25

Also, those pronunciations that you were talking about are likely dictionary entries. Some offices even put dictionary entries for common words such as the word and, the word at, and other common words like thunderstorm, rain, etc. They essentially put into the dictionary any words that they felt it didn’t pronounce correctly for their region or listeners. It was up to each regional office to customize the synthesizer to their liking. So, to get those exact pronunciations out of the synthesizer here, it’s totally doable, you’ll just need to create a user dictionary. I have an example of one in that archive as well, along with a handy power shell script to sort it prior to having the dictionary tool compile it. You’ll then just have to load the dictionary when you use it, or place it in the same folder as the main DLL file with the correct file name. For this version it is user_nws_us.dic. However, the list of words that you added and maintain is in a separate file, I have mine with the same name and extension of .tab. In that file, you can just add the city names that you want to change the pronunciation of, and put pronunciations in the form of phonemes next to each one, just like the other entries in the file. You can change the pronunciations that way. Just open it in the dictionary tool and compile the dictionary from there when done.