Speech synthesis from vocal tract area function acoustical measurements

This paper presents studies and experiments in vocal-tract area function acoustical measurements and in speech synthesis from a physiological model of the vocal tract and the vocal cords. Following previous work by the same authors, problems associated with dynamic measurements of the vocal tract, with the quantization and interpolation of area functions are discussed and area function measurements for fixed and moving vocal tracts configurations corresponding, to sustained vowels and vowel transitions are presented. Experimental results illustrate the determination of lips and glottis position, and of the vocal tract length. Comparisons have been made with available data for vocal tract shape and formant characteristics. Speech synthesized from measured area functions is demonstrated.