Speech synthesis from acoustic units with default values of concatenation cost
AssigneeAT&T Intellectual Property II, L.P.
InventorsMark Charles Beutnagel, Mehryar Mohri, Michael Dennis Riley
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Abstract
A speech synthesis system can select recorded speech fragments, or acoustic units, from a very large database of acoustic units to produce artificial speech. When a pair of acoustic units in the database does not have an associated concatenation cost, the system assigns a default concatenation cost. The system then synthesizes speech, identifies the acoustic unit sequential pairs generated and their respective concatenation costs, and stores those concatenation costs likely to occur.
Claims20
A method comprising:
- when, while synthesizing speech via a processor, an acoustic unit sequential pair does not have an associated concatenation cost in a concatenation cost database:
- assigning a default value as the associated concatenation cost;
- and
- updating the concatenation cost database by synthesizing, via the processor, a body of speech, identifying the acoustic unit sequential pair in the body of speech, and recording a respective concatenation cost in the concatenation cost database.
A system comprising:
- a processor;
- and
- a computer-readable storage medium having instructions stored which, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to perform operations comprising:
- when, while synthesizing speech, an acoustic unit sequential pair does not have an associated concatenation cost in a concatenation cost database:
- assigning a default value as the associated concatenation cost;
- and
- updating the concatenation cost database by synthesizing a body of speech, identifying the acoustic unit sequential pair in the body of speech, and recording a respective concatenation cost in the concatenation cost database.
A computer-readable storage device having instructions stored which, when executed by a computing device, cause the computing device to perform operations comprising:
- when, while synthesizing speech, an acoustic unit sequential pair does not have an associated concatenation cost in a concatenation cost database:
- assigning a default value as the associated concatenation cost;
- and
- updating the concatenation cost database by synthesizing a body of speech, identifying the acoustic unit sequential pair in the body of speech, and recording a respective concatenation cost in the concatenation cost database.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.