Show HN: Sam TTS – Recreates the classic Microsoft SAM voice in the browser

15•chrisweiindie•8mo ago

Hi HN,

I built a fun little side project that recreates the classic Microsoft SAM voice from Windows XP—entirely in the browser.

SAM TTS uses phoneme-based synthesis (no AI models), written in JavaScript with Web Audio API. You can type any text, adjust pitch/speed/mouth/throat settings, and instantly hear the robotic voice we all remember from early 2000s computers.

You can even download the generated audio as a WAV file, which makes it handy for game developers, meme creators, retro enthusiasts, or anyone who wants to bring a touch of digital nostalgia to their work.

This was inspired by both my childhood memory of playing with SAM on XP, and my curiosity about how voice synthesis worked before neural TTS took over.

Would love to hear your thoughts or feedback!

Try it here: https://samtts.com

Comments

beagle3•8mo ago

Sounds exactly the same as SAM on the C64 circa 1985 (and likely Apple II around the same time?)

Is this early 2000’s? Dr.Sbaitso circa 1992 sounded better. AT&T had an offering in 2002 that sounded completely natural.

ctoth•8mo ago

Just to clarify - this is SAM (Software Automatic Mouth), a vintage speech synthesizer from the early 1980s Commodore era, not Microsoft Sam (the SAPI 5 voice from Windows XP). These are entirely different technologies from different generations of speech synthesis. SAM is remarkably elegant in its simplicity.

For my own project, I've been recreating the formant synthesizer described in Dennis Klatt's influential 1980 paper. I've found that WebAudio Worklets provide an excellent framework for implementing this type of acoustic modeling in the browser.

pvg•8mo ago

Is your project public?

ctoth•8mo ago

Not yet, though this is good motivation for me to get off my butt and publish it!

akx•8mo ago

Speaking of that sort of thing, have you seen https://dood.al/pinktrombone/ (/ https://github.com/imaginary/pink-trombone/)?

akx•8mo ago

* Windows XP's speech synthesizer wasn't SAM (Software Automatic Mouth), and sounded nothing like this. (I know this is emulating Software Automatic Mouth, because, well, https://samtts.com/lib/sam.js says so, and has a link to https://github.com/discordier/sam. It would be courteous to at least acknowledge the shoulders you're standing on.)

* I would be very wary about touting this to be "Microsoft SAM TTS" so prominently, since it has nothing to do with Microsoft.

* Your privacy policy page is from "Image to Ghibli".

* Your contact and about pages are 404.

* All of the copy smells like AI, and "5 stars from 2000+ happy users" is probably a blatant lie. (Where can I see some of those 5-star reviews, or review it myself?)

* "Our modern SAM TTS JavaScript implementation brings this iconic Microsoft voice to your browser" is also pretty disingenious, both because it's not a Microsoft voice, and as seen above, you didn't implement the TTS.

* Some of the alternate TTS implementations you link to (and then embed from Huggingface) in the footer are broken.

* Your Sign-in button (why would I sign in anyway?) is broken: "Access blocked: This app’s request is invalid" from Google, "Error 400: redirect_uri_mismatch".

jasonjmcghee•8mo ago

It looks a bit like a 100% vibe coded project. There are things like "Listen to examples" and there are no examples and other weird things I wouldn't expect a human to do.

HanClinto•8mo ago

This is pretty great! Excellent work!

I could be wrong, but I think the presets for Stuffy Guy and Little Old Lady seem to be swapped?

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