SpellSynth vs S

SpellSynth is a playable love-letter to the 1978 spelling toy that taught a generation to read — rebuilt for iPhone, iPad, and Mac, in English and French, with five modes, a crunchy VFD display, and three vintage voice characters across two decades of speech-synthesis history. Tap a letter and it speaks. Type ANY word — your name, this week's vocabulary list — and SpellSynth speaks it back. EVERY WORD SPEAKS The 500+ bundled words across 20+ themes use a hand-recorded retro voice. Anything else — a name, your kid's spelling list — falls back to the system engine through your chosen voice, cached so the second tap is instant. • FREE PLAY — type any word, a whole phrase, or a number and hear it spoken. Tap SPACE to build a sentence; it's read back word by word as the VFD cycles. Numbers ("2" becomes "two") and contractions ("don't") speak too. A GAP control tunes the pause between words (50–500 ms), and a RECENT row keeps this session. • SEQ — a 16-step sequencer that speaks a word per step, locked to your tempo. Type four words, get a robot vocal loop. Put a single letter on a step and it says the letter name on the beat instead. FIT stretches each word to fill its step, so words pitch up as the tempo climbs. • SPELL — SpellSynth says a word. You spell it. Three mistakes and you get the answer, then try a new one. HINT reveals a letter when you're stuck. • MYSTERY WORD — the classic hidden-word game. You get the category and first letter free; pick letters until it reveals itself. Six wrong guesses ends it. • SAY IT — listen-and-repeat practice. SpellSynth spells the word letter by letter, then says it whole. REPEAT to hear it again, NEXT for a new one. • SHARE — render any word or phrase to a WAV and send it to Files, AirDrop, or your DAW. EN FRANÇAIS Pick Français in Settings and SpellSynth speaks French: 360+ words, French game screens and an apostrophe key, after the 1981 French edition. The AUv3 speaks French too. THREE VINTAGE VOICES Pick a voice character in Settings. Each one draws from a different era of speech-synthesis history, applied to every word you hear: • 1968 ODYSSEY — calm, deep-baritone monotone with a deliberately slow cadence. Aesthetic homage to the late-60s sci-fi AI voices. • 1978 LPC — the original Speak & Spell character. A 10-pole LPC vocoder driven by the actual TMS5220 chirp ROM, the same speech algorithm Texas Instruments shipped in the toy. Buzzy, granular, unmistakable. • 1986 DECTALK STYLE — fixed-pitch impulse train through formants extracted from your input. Modelled on the Klatt-style synthesis that defined Hawking's iconic computer voice. Deliberate, monotone, emphatically computery. • DEFAULT — clean system speech, no extra processing, for when you just want clear pronunciation. PLAY WITH A MIDI KEYBOARD Connect a USB, Bluetooth, or Network MIDI keyboard and the keypad plays from real keys. MIDI notes 60–85 (C4–C#6) trigger letters A–Z. BUNDLED AUDIO UNIT (AUv3) SpellSynth ships an AUv3 instrument extension, so the same voice engine loads inside GarageBand, AUM, Loopy Pro, Cubasis, Logic Pro for iPad, and any AUv3 host on iPhone or iPad. Type a word and it speaks. Twenty-four parameters cover pitch, speed, bit-crush, sample-rate reduction, filter, envelope, LFO, stutter, the step sequencer, MIDI shaping, language, and voice character. Ten factory presets; all four voices play in your DAW. A serious MIDI surface for performers: sustain pedal (CC 64) for hold-and-release phrasing, Channel Pressure (aftertouch) routable to any parameter, three velocity curves (Soft / Linear / Hard), a pitch-bend range from ±0 to ±12 semitones, and 14 MIDI Learn targets covering every performance knob — bound CCs ride along with the preset. Stutter locks to the host tempo (1/4, 1/8, 1/16), and a Letter Map mode maps A–Z onto MIDI notes 60–85 so you can sequence spelling right in your DAW. Perfect for producers chasing that Kraftwerk / Stereolab / Broadcast sound.

The whole Roland S-1 panel on your iPhone or iPad, over USB-C. The S-1 hides half its brain behind the Shift key. This editor puts all of it in front of you: all 54 parameters, laid out like the SH-101 panel — the synth the S-1 rebuilds — so the signal chain reads at a glance. WHAT IT DOES • All 54 control changes, with faders where the SH-101 had them and knobs where it did not. • Follows the hardware: move a knob on the S-1 and the screen follows in real time. • 60 factory presets in six categories. Versions of the patch charts from the original SH-101 manual, the club sounds the 101 became known for, and a bank built by ear against the unit. • Four sequencers: step piano roll, three-layer euclidean, scale-based generative and arpeggio. • Motion recording: move any control while it plays and it gets automated step by step. • A randomizer that blows up the whole engine and still leaves something audible. • Your own sound library, with export and import. • Light and dark. Spanish, English and Portuguese. WORTH KNOWING You need a Roland S-1 connected over USB-C. The editor makes no sound of its own: it sends MIDI to the unit, and the unit is what you hear. The S-1 does not answer SysEx. There is no way to read a sound out of it or store one over MIDI, so the library lives in the app and WRITE is pressed on the unit. The app selects the target pattern and dumps the sound so all you do is confirm. The whole parameter map comes from the official v1.02 manual. PRIVACY Nothing is collected. No accounts, no network, no analytics. Your sounds stay on your device. Made by fantasmogenesis.