Speech synthesizer having an acoustic element database

Details Speech synthesizer having an acoustic element database Speech synthesizer having an acoustic element database

1995-08-16

1998-05-12

MacDonald, Allen R.

395 267, 395 269, G10L 504

Patent

active

057519072

ABSTRACT:
A speech synthesis method employs an acoustic element database that is established from phonetic sequences occurring in an interval of a speech signal. In establishing the database, trajectories are determined for each of the phonetic sequences containing a phonetic segment that corresponds to a particular phoneme. A tolerance region is then identified based on a concentration of trajectories that correspond to different phoneme sequences. The acoustic elements for the database are formed from portions of the phonetic sequences by identifying cut points in the phonetic sequences which correspond to time points along the respective trajectories proximate the tolerance region. In this manner, it is possible to concatenate the acoustic elements having a common junction phonemes such that perceptible discontinuities at the junction phonemes are minimized. Computationally simple and fast methods for determining the tolerance region are also disclosed.

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