This is awesome. I think the title is misleading though; it's about <i>reproducing digitized speech</i>. This converts the already digitally represented sound to actual analog sound, audible by humans. The output device is a by cleverly (and mechanically) played classical piano.<p>The resulting voice sounds like a bad special effect, but is really cool since it isn't. :)
However, if you don't look at the subtitles it's quite hard to recognize the words. Showing the subtitles of what you're supposed to hear is called 'Prompting', an effect which is also used by backward-speech advocates.
If you read up a bit on how mp3 compression and GSM work then you'll find that in essence they rebuild the sound from a very limited number of frequencies.<p>Very nice find, and extremely impressive the speed with which the keys are manipulated.<p>I wonder if it is possible to have a human learn the key sequences of the dominant frequency bands and make a piano speak a word or two.<p>In neuromancer there is a head in villa straylight that speaks with organ pipes iirc.
It's fascinating to listen to but I wonder about extending it to other languages. Does American English lend itself well to this sort of thing or are other languages and accents reproducible. I imagine that languages with much harsher stops like German or Russian would be more difficult and those that are easily broken down, like Japanese, would be even easier than English.
This seems like it might have some similarities to sine wave speech synthesis. Of course, its far more impressive with a real piano.<p><a href="http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Sine-wave_speech" rel="nofollow">http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Sine-wave_speech</a>
I find it particularly interesting that words that end in hard consonants (like T or D) are represented by very high-pitched keys to create the percussive sound (especially noticeable at the end of the video). This is too cool.
Very very amazing!<p>On another subject, I want some kind of 'piano player' with pistons like this piano, and you attach it to a non-MIDI instrument and it plays the keys via MIDI data, without having to retrofit it electronically.
Seeing as it is on MAKEzine I am upset there are not plans to build your own... Seriously that would be one hell of a weekend(s) project. Writing the software/midi stuff sounds fun too!