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I posted a question on StackOverflow a while ago trying to learn the easiest way to get MapQuest to give you turn by turn voice output from Optimus Prime. Yesterday I saw a recent comment inquiring whether or not I had a solution. Today I have a possible solution. I found an open source vocoder written in C (Zerius Vocoder) that I’ve managed to build/run on the Mac. It works pretty good, I must say. Hi, I’m Cliff. You’re here because you obsess over little robot toys that fold into/out of vehicle form. I’m here to report status on what could be a nifty little iPhone app.

Imagine for a moment that you could plug a vocoder into the pipeline of CoreAudio’s queue services API. (Imagine that there were such a pipeline!) That would allow all sorts of interesting voice output! So far I only have a compiled binary with sample files and a rough understanding of what vocoding actually means. Obvious next steps are to finish my Speex tutorial series and refine the hideousness of iPhone audio APIs. I’m really thinking of using pipelines similar to how GStreamer works. If I get distracted reading that link to GStreamer I may end up on a tangent, trying to port GStreamer to CocoaTouch. That’s all for now, party people. I’ll hit you back when I actually have something tangible to share.

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