LGR Oddware - Covox Speech Thing LPT Sound Device

Overview, installation, and demonstration of the forgotten PC sound device known as the Covox Speech Thing.
Many thanks to Harry for donating this!
/ harrymatic
Download the MOD files played at the end of video:
Space Debris
modarchive.org/index.php?reque...
what is funk ?
modarchive.org/index.php?reque...
Acidjazzed Evening
modarchive.org/index.php?reque...

[@LGR]

@Dirik619 Thing is, a lot of other people are enjoying these. And I enjoy making them. If you don't like them, don't watch. Problem solved.

[@AndyTrampke]

LGR wow was somebody really giving you shit 6 years ago?? If they only knew how beloved the oddware series would become. Thank you for all your wonderful content LGR!!!

[@DumbArse]

Oh god, when youtube just decided to fuck up all of it's replies by not making them appear as replies and never bothered to fucking fix it. Good old memories

[@JaredConnell]

So glad you never listened to this jerk. Oddware is probably my favorite series of yours. That or tech tales but I just love seeing these strange products I've never heard of that I'd never see without your videos. Keep it up Clint!

[@BabusGameRoom]

@@tolentarpay5464 Pretty sure he did...the comment is 9 years old! lmao

[@smeezekitty]

@@DumbArse It was astounding how long Google took to fix the KZbin comments after they royally fucked them for no reason at all.

[@vwestlife]

Probably the first time in history anyone has used a parallel port DAC with a subwoofer! I do remember seeing circuit schematics for building your own DAC, as well as a parallel port ADC, for digitizing and recording your own sounds, in all their gritty, metallic 8-bit glory.

[@LGR]

Thanks, awesome to hear! I hope you continue to enjoy, lots of retro goodness coming in the future.

[@ChrisCahill17]

And lots of retro goodness we have here in 2020! 🤘

[@PerKristian]

WHY IS THIS MUSIC SO EXTREMELY GROOVY?!

[@dumdum7786]

Per Kristian WHY AM I SO SMOL

[@Charlesb88]

Maybe Because it was copied from a phonograph record?😆 Remember records are groovy but CDs are the pits.

[@wesleythomas7125]

Bangin' soundtrack. 19:06: Space Debris 24:14 What is Funk? 26:47 Acid Jazz Evening

[@jturner718]

Space Debris is one of my favorite pieces of mod music ever, hear it all the time on KZbin.

[@joemck85]

How on earth did Pinball Fantasies manage to find the CPU time to render smooth-scrolling graphics like that, while bitbanging audio out the parallel port, on a 386?

[@burgundyyears]

It was written in pure assembly on the PC. Possibly the best Amiga to PC port of all time. Not for the weak of heart.

[@remisclassiccomputers341]

Actually it runs smooth on my 286@12mhz with lpt sound as well.

[@owlstead]

This kind of thing came out of the DEMO scene. So they made demo's with smooth scrolling and great sounrds, and figured out that those could be used for gaming. So this kind of game was written *after* the tech was figured out. Of course they would still have had to do this for the PC, after having had the game created for Amiga. Early PC's were rather limited to home computers, which had standard (and standardized) sound and video (of course, the CPU speed, memory layout and expand-ability was much better). The current game computers are a hybrid of both.

I guess it uses VGA register level feature to split screen and scroll, so it needs almost no CPU power at all to do the scrolling. Just the ball and other visible effects should be drawn, and the display at the bottom. Surely, if CPU should refresh all the screen in the name of scrolling, it wouldn't be so simple case. So, I guess, a 386 is more than enough for this.

[@awhooley]

Old comment I know, but You should try pinball fantasies with just the pc speaker.. also plays amazing and sound effects!

[@shorty1k]

holy crap, I was expecting really bad chiptunes out of such a simple device. For something you can make yourself, this is unbelievably impressive. Thank you so much for sharing this.

[@kirbyyasha]

I want Pinball Fantasies solely for that awesome amazing opening... Damn that's some serious opening for a pinball game. Like I am about to witness the best of pinball that is to ever exist.

[@GarethKK]

I remember being amazed by the Pinball Fantasies audio back in the day when everything else was using AdLib effects.

[@Bark777]

Same here. The PC speaker usually sounds like crap but Pinball Fantasies used the pc speaker in way that I couldn't believe it wasn't a sound card involved.. From what I recall the pc speaker in pinball fantasies sounded the same as the Covox device in this video.

[@Scalibq]

Yea, Pinball Fantasies was originally an Amiga game, and as such, had MOD music. The PC version got a direct port of that music, using software mixing. It sounds virtually the same on SB, Covox and PC Speaker, because you're essentially listening to the exact same stream of digital samples. PC speaker is slightly lower quality, because it uses the PWM method of sample playback rather than PCM, which only has about 6-bit precision (see RealSound mentioned elsewhere), and can have an audible 'carrier whine' if you have to use a low mixing frequency if your PC is not fast enough. But still, you can make MODs sound quite good on PC speaker, and indeed close to an 8-bit DAC like early SBs or Covox.

[@sotesz]

This video reminded me how awesome music that game had. I didn't appreciate it as much back then like now I think. I'm tempted to toss some cool mod based music in the mix of mp3s onto my player now...

[@Halo3machenima]

And to think that game was made by the studio that now makes Battlefield.

[@Eeroke]

Wow, it's all been made clear now. I see the game composers, the classic EDM crowd and the demoscene influencing each other. Fruitfully. What a seminal time that must have been.

[@TimVerweij]

Pinball Fantasies has superb sound code. So many different sound hardware options. It can even use the PC speaker (or Adlib) to play the digital audio. I think it even worked quite well on a 286. The programmers of this game did some amazing work.

[@LGR]

@5kogur High CPU demands due to lack of DMA, low publisher and developer support, and internal cards like the AdLib (and soon, Sound Blaster) coming along shortly after its release that were more versatile. Those are the biggest reasons I can think of.

[@AnalogX64]

I was really active in the Amiga / Demo scene back in the 90's I'm surprised I never heard about this. Makes that PC sounds like an Amiga. Good job making this video.

[@CoyoteSeven]

Space Debris. One of my favorite mods that I'd play on my Amiga all the time. Kinda funny to hear it again like this.

[@maxheadrom3088]

I built one for my 386SX back in the day using a simple resistor network. MOD files sounded a lot better!

[@kumbah2006]

I built one of these "Covox" devices, and still use it occasionally for entertainment and some audio fun. There's a few "tracker" programs that also use it, I believe. So, you can actually create the music that you are hearing, but it's a bit of a geeky interface - takes awhile to get used to it. Perhaps I should do a video showing a few things I have that run on it.

[@LGR]

@opticburn It's that little DAC only, I swear! Craziness, isn't it? I couldn't believe it myself when I first heard it, it's just insane how awesome it sounds for such a dinky little LPT device.

[@HebaruSan]

This video is now almost old enough to be oddware itself.

[@matsv201]

It's is now

[@ThunderspearNZ]

Me in 2023 looking at your comment from 5 years ago. Now I can tell you this video is definitely an oddware haha

[@MauriceKon]

the idea of a LPT DAC is so simple yet giving great results, even for real wav sound. the only thing that might break down speed and performance is the fact that it uses the cpu for conversion of the sound data.

[@Hexumonium]

I fell asleep to this and it put me in a very hazy dream state. I didn't want to get out of bed so I kept going back to sleep. I slept for over 12 hours. It was incredible.

[@demosthenets]

Awesome reviews LGR! Checked out your channel at random and for some reason these retro hardware reviews just tickle the 5-10 year old me messing around with computers in the late 90's early 2000s. You definately earned my subscription!

[@asgerms]

Love this kind of "primitive" engineering where somebody wires a couple of resistors together and suddenly we're in another galaxy (compared to the PC-speaker). An A/B test would have been fun, just to illustrate the dramatic difference; straight from PC-speaker to COVOX on Pinball Fantasies :)

[@matsv201]

It's worh saying that the PC speaker could be run with PCM drivers, then the sound was a lot better. No where close to covex, but still, something that could play actually was sounds. There even was hackad windows 3.1 drivers to do it in windows. The main issue is that unlike the parallel port that at least could buffer up the next output. For the PC speaker the CPU need to precise controll every movment of the speaker. This took even more cpu power. To the amount that the windows drivers totqly locked up windows. But it could be used in pinball games with no issue.(on a 486)

[@Apollyon.King.of.the.Locusts]

Space Debris is a cool song.

[@LGR]

@waymuu "Space Debris" by Captain is the first MOD, "What Is Funk?" is the second MOD, "Acidjazzed Evening" is the third MOD.

[@vyvyncruxbutt8836]

IF you haven't already, Totally got to do a history vid on demoscene and all the wonderful nuances of mod, xm, it and such. Especially games that tended to use them (Just about everything by epic comes to mind)

[@TheMouseGunner]

Rewatching all the oddware/hardware videos, because they are so interesting. Must admit I have learned a lot from you LGR and although I remember having/using computers from the late 80s and on, I can't remember any of the details and it is fun seeing this stuff talked about and explained. Wish I could remember what model my first family computer was, just remember it being a Packard Bell.

[@garethlynch2823]

Bro, I love your videos and the fact that you have created playlists for everything you've done makes working so much easier for me. Well, maybe not easier, but it's certainly more bearable and entertaining :D

[@Hurfdurfhurf]

Oh man Acidjazzed Evening

[@NathanArias]

Pinball Fantasies had sound effects because it was onto the .mod itself with the music, so instead opening separated files, the game just opens the .mod and plays everything.Also, PBF sounds good even with the pc speaker, it's awesome.

[@LGR]

@HarryMatic Good to know, thank you!

[@TastyBusiness]

This sounds amazing. I didn't expect it to sound so good.

[@LGR]

@GeoNeilUK It may have been, I'm actually not sure. I know a lot of the MOD files I have were originally created for the Amiga.

[@Lukeno52]

The Speech Thing idea lives on, at least to a certain degree, in today's USB sound cards. The Speech Thing is VERY impressive when you consider how simple it is though.

[@ruadeil_zabelin]

Man i love mod audio. I used to have a lot of cdroms with thousands of mod files on them, and I would just spend hours browsing through them and listening, on my old 486.

[@sybelcalmon1128]

dude you`re rad!! love your content. and those mod soundtracks demos are so freakin cool.. they all inspired me as a profesional audio engineer these days! Thank you!

[@LGR]

@Dirik619 Happy to be of service!

[@my4trackmachine]

Acidjazzed Evening is by far one of my favorite c64 tunes. the mod version is pretty sweet too.

[@LGR]

@JonteP0nte Yes, it's a big strain on the CPU. That's why I had to play the songs at something like 11khz. You can achieve higher rates the faster the CPU is.

[@manuelink64]

Space Debris!!! I had this file searched for eons, Thanks! i love the mod files

[@side2sideful]

I knew I had heard it before, and had it in my collection! The pesky thing was hiding among about 6000 tracks, and I would never be able to find it if it wasn't for you. Thanks a lot, man.

[@LGR]

@ff5x2 Out of This World/Another World supports the Disney Sound Source, which is rather similar to the Speech Thing, but it is not compatible.

[@LGR]

@ImperialProductions I know, right? I assume its low usage was due mostly to its lack of DMA, resulting in lots of CPU load, and publishers being approached by and eventually utilizing Adlib instead.

[@biboKralle]

Thanks to your channel I rediscovered my love for retro games and my Saturday rocks! :)

[@LGR]

@Clearstarsummer They're listed in the video description. You can just download and play the MOD files using the links provided.

[@tahustvedt]

Holy crap the memories this video evoked. I recognize everything. Loved this music back then. Still do now that I hear it again.

[@LGR]

@LoticaStudios I don't have a DSS yet, but I hope to get one and cover it here eventually. The circuitry and logic is a bit different from the Speech Thing from what I gather.

[@taelisynstormcrow5651]

I owned a Covox Jr. for the C64. Speech recognition in 1988!!!

[@sumienietwoje8689]

Every Digital sound can be convert to covos. At the "93 I had software " comak. exe" which I convert main file which I run the game. This software could direct the sound to LPT covox. So I converted game another world to covox.

[@GrumpyMonk86]

I understand what youre saying about how crappy the sound was on the pc speaker, but personally I just love it. it has so much charm and i just love it.

[@niceandgames]

This thing is seriously great. Such a simple, dare I say crude (not in a bad sense) device that allowed for such great sound! People must've flipped out back then hearing it. Flipped right out! Well, maybe not, but it is still cool. And it plugs into the parallel port! Awesome!!

[@LGR]

@Robloxian182 You could likely use it with a Widows driver to play back WAV files and such, but I'm not sure what else. I have a Windows driver for the thing, PM me if you want it. I haven't tried the Speech Thing with Windows yet, but questions like yours have made me curious!

[@mkastelovic]

I had a home made Covox in the mid of 90ties. That jump from PC speaker to another sound galaxy was awesome. I still remember the first test. :D There was a special tsr program which allowed you to use this DA with some of the games which were using the sampled sounds. Like Ishar 1 and 2, Metal Mutant, some sierra adventure games, etc. Even Disney sound source was possible to use in Wolfestein. :D I just can't remember anymore the name of that SW. In the times, when I had already the CD burner, I had also SB16, Covox was already in the hand of my brother in law and I didn't backup on the CDs that SW :( . But it was really clever TSR program.

[@Amphy2k]

Wow that music is awesome! Also, love the spider at 27:55 ;p

[@VoceCorale]

"acidjazzed evening". You can read it at 26:45

[@LGR]

It's an NCR Comten 386SX, there's a video of on my channel.

[@LGR]

@ModernDoomer89 I agree, the name is just fantastic. It does its job of keeping the device memorable, too! I still wanna grab a DSS, since it doesn't seem to be really compatible with the Speech Thing, and vice versa.

[@LGR]

@surfingthechaos Well, what I meant was that you don't have to install any drivers. It still needs a driver as far as I know, which the games that utilized it often came with. COVOX.DRV or something like that is in the game directory, chosen via the game setup. So for Windows, you do need a driver. I have some drivers for Windows 3.x, but I'm not sure if they would work on Win7 or not. That would be freaking sweet if they did, and I'd test it myself but my modern PC doesn't have a parallel port.

[@theeggman4806]

Awesome vids dude..keep up the great work..been binge wattching over the last few months..seeing how your channel has grown and how you have aged lo.l...greetz from the uk...

[@amshermansen]

Oh my gosh - Pinball Fantasies had such a cool soundtrack. I remember playing it on Amiga.

[@LGR]

@rastaxp I'll go one better: I'm currently working on a pretty lengthy video about Jazz Jackrabbit, its history, its gameplay, its relation to the Gravis Gamepad, and a review of each version of the original game. How's that sound?

[@jilmarit]

Lifting up an old video :-). Funniest thing happened in 2005 when I was driving car and turned on the car radio. I couldn’t believe the music from 3D Mark 05 was playing! That was when the composer of ”Space Debris” Markus Kaarlonen, a.k.a. ”Kapu” (eng. Captain), had put out first record with their latest band Poets Of The Fall. That was the song ”Lift” (titled ”Lift Me Higher” in the end credits of 3D Mark 05).

[@LGR]

@serginietor I know it was big in the computer music demo scene, as shown in this video with the MOD files and all that.

[@rvndmnmt1]

Oh my God. Forgive me, I was on subs in the Navy and we used 688I for training. It definitely got the boredom down right followed by five minutes of stark terror. I don't blame you for not playing it. Spent almost six years of my life underwater and underway. Man, that brought back some memories.

[@RoyHess666]

The inertia player music you're playing reminds me of very good old Amiga times. thanks!

[@RetardicA]

Sound device reviews makes me a very happy KZbinr. Thank you again, sir.

[@johndoe1909]

Such a simple and elegant construction!

[@LGR]

@R33Racer It's the Oddware sound! Truthfully I don't remember. I recorded it a long time ago and recently found on a backup disc.

[@zackschilling4376]

This just sounds awesome. I love it !

[@TheIdleCrow]

I gotta say this thing is fascinating that something like this even exists i never heard of it till today, if I ever seen one I'll pick it up, would be pretty cool to own!

[@deanmason9481]

I remember building one of these from a diagram in a magazine back in the day and using it on my 386sx25, then playing pinball fantasies and being in absolute awe at the fact that the little machine could play that game in a strange semi high-resolution non-standard VESA mode (wasnt it like 320x400??) with smooth scrolling and output reasonable quality digital audio over a parallel port simultaneously.. and not even frameskip

[@johnholtgreve3114]

There was an external speech synthesizer for the Apple II that was designed as an accessibility peripheral for blind and visually impaired people. The voice was the standard 80s Stephen Hawking but it actually worked pretty damn well and was surprisingly responsive and quick. I used it throughout elementary school but couldn’t tell you the model number. Definitely worth investigating if any of them is still floating around somewhere, although ancient accessibility tech must be nigh impossible to find.

[@LGR]

@rthijssen84 That it does. Still, it's pretty crazy what you can get the PC speaker to pull off, if only barely!

[@LGR]

@Psyke89PT Sounds awesome! Haven't tried it yet, but I certainly will soon.

[@ByteSizeThoughts]

This will add to my ocd to now always look through all plastic boxes of electronics in thrift stores looking for this curious device!

[@Pyroja]

"acid jazzed" @ 26:45 sounds *almost* as good as it does on a C64! Wow =D

[@burningpapersun1]

The music for the stones n bones sounds amazing

[@FinalBaton]

+Justin Dotson so phat

[@NatalieThress]

to think we went from this to having built in dac's that sound pretty decent

[@emilrahbek1688]

Man that spider thing at 27:45 gave me a shock -.-'

[@QJ89]

I'd love to own one of these tarantulas!

[@arvizturotukorfurogep6235]

Covox Spider Thing

[@mjetektman9313]

man, when i heard the first mod music, remembered me from my childhood, when i played PGen in my PS2... and the covox speech thing have a good quality for a little and mono DAC

[@AngryBogle]

I don't know much about the oddware here but dang, those songs are now in my head for years to come.

[@hastypixels]

It took a few dozen episodes to realize you were a scener! Let's hear it for observation! When you demo'd the CMS/Game Blaster, am I right to think you also compose music? Perhaps even, tracked music? Heh. You showed excellent taste here, too! Thanks for posting these fun videos!

[@LGR]

@TeamRocketReviews I've seen some Gravis sticks for the Apple II, like the Mark VI. Their analog joysticks are quite nice, although really I'm not fond of their gamepads. Never liked the feel of the D-pad, even on their later versions like the Gamepad Pro.

[@vwestlife]

Also probably the first time anyone played "Acid Jazzed Evening" on a Covox, although I did hear some distortion on that MOD, maybe due to the aforementioned resistors.

[@LGR]

@Segadude3000 I have now! Sounds a lot like the Iomega drives that were so popular at the time.

[@awesomeferret]

The song at 19:20 is used in Pgen (PS2 homebrew Sega Genesis emulator). It sounds a lot better on the PS2. I always thought that it was made for that emulator, but I sure was wrong. :) Or, just find it on KZbin. ;)

[@ILC_YTP]

***** also it was used in a game called need for madness

[@kevinjacquot3183]

+awesomeferret watch?v=thnXzUFJnfQ

[@awesomeferret]

Kevin Jacquot I know. Thanks anyway. By the way, you are a bit late (by a few years). Thanks to the much-needed G+ integration, you can post full KZbin links (and other links too).

[@MrStofkat]

+awesomeferret Wow thanks for pointing that out, was already wondering where I knew it from :)

[@AmaroqStarwind]

Nice to see I am not the only Mod-music enthusiast. I actually bought Unreal Tournament and Deus Ex just for the music. CoLD SToRAGE did most of the soundtrack for the original WipE'out", and for the PC version of WipE'out" 2097, on an Amiga... but the Amiga versions of those games use CD music for some stupid reason.

[@swiftfox3461]

Amaroqdricaldari Deus Ex has some amazing music, especially the intro theme (which is near the top of my top 10 favourite video game music pieces ever). I can see how you might want to buy the game just for that sweet music :)

[@LGR]

@TeamRocketReviews You should be able to use them with a Tandy, so long as you installed a card with a game port. I actually still have the original Gravis Analog Joystick, boxed and everything! Love Gravis hardware.

[@MathU41]

Wow, I had forgotten how awesome so much of the music from back then was. It really made flying a spaceship/saving the world/stacking blocks feel like an epic journey.

[@ThePhantomSafetyPin]

That is some... ridiculously epic-sounding music for a PINBALL GAME COLLECTION. :D

[@benh.635]

I was trying to find how I found out about Space Debris again. THIS IS THE VIDEO! But in all seriousness, I was trying to find the video that introduced me to Space Debris and I have found it. Space Debris is possibly my all-time favorite MOD file. :)

[@LGR]

@MobyGamer Hehe, I wish I had a real Speech Thing to show! The software in particular interests me, and I've seen the box in that video you uploaded a while back. It looks awesome, I'd love to see the contents.

[@outdatedTV]

Pinball Dreams, Pinball Fantasies, MOD tracker music, some tallented composer!

[@stanleyek]

They have made some nice pieces of music on this thing!

[@Spudcore]

Sounds great! Really reminds me of the Amiga.

[@Daytona574]

Ahhh, Inertia Player. Still my favorite. IIRC, it shipped with a text file showing how to build several different parallel port DACs, one that could do stereo. I tried unsuccessfully, I'm sure I had something connected wrong, never bothered to figure it out.

[@cruising84]

The music you play at 19:00 sounds exactly like ModPlug i used to listen with in the late 90s. There was a PC magazine "PC För Alla" if i remember right that hade tons of ModPlug music like this and the ModPlug player on every CD-Rom...brings me some momories :D

[@jonathan_herr]

there's something to be said about a good, GOOD ol modfile and it just making you go all 'aah... i'm so relaxed'...

[@IamFat32]

Angry bird at 26:26 , you make the best videos on the internet of this variety. Other videos can be too short, and not in detail without the hosts opinion. and you actually have a sense of humor, too.

[@strayblackcatsmeow]

The covox voicemaster took analogue speech or sounds and converted them to digital for editing and playback and for use in programs. That device looks like the means to play it back on soundless computers. My voicemaster was for my C64. Sound files could be played back without the voicemaster attached using the C64 built in digital to analogue ability. Covox also made a C64 5 dollar talking disk to demonstrate the voicemasters potential in software programming.

[@Maxxarcade]

I'd love to see someone run a pair of these on a PC, with special software to allow for stereo sound. Despite the low sample rate, that thing sounds pretty good IMO.

[@LGR]

Not really any need, as there are stereo versions available!

[@RvLeshrac]

***** This. Covox and DSS were just DACs with an interesting connection type.

[@speakertomeat]

You can make an equivalent dac with almost any arduino and 16 resistors (for stereo). Let's say you use the usb at 115kbps, that should give you 7 kHz sampling rate :D

[@thanthanasiszamp4707]

+Maxxarcade I want a Covox too because I fried my soundcard accidentally :/

[@Maxxarcade]

I have a bunch of sound cards laying around. Not sure how much it would cost to ship one though?

[@deaczorz]

ahh cool mod music, kinda forgot about it. amazing what you could do with only 4 channels of sound. thinking about the amiga mainly. Keep on the good work phreakindee

[@PimpinBassie2]

(Almost verbatim) Speech Thing is a digital-to-analog SPEECH SYNTHESIZER. The hardware component attaches in-line to the parallel printer port and does not interfere with printer operation. The software consists of a talking calculator, a talking blackjack game, a music sampler keyboard, a graphics-based sound editor, a special effects control panel, and prerecorded sounds for inclusion in user-written programs. Also included is a copy of SmoothTalker from First Byte.

[@jasonz7788]

Great work Sir thank you