Cepstral synthesis of Japanese from CV syllable parameters

Natural and intelligible Japanese was synthesized from consonant-vowel (CV) syllable parameters. Japanese has approximately one hundred CV type syllables which are represented by Japanese alphabet. Each CV syllable is analyzed and stored in the form of cepstrum corresponding to a true log spectral envelope. The speech synthesis system converts character strings into the cepstral parameters with an appropriate dynamic transition from one syllable to the next, and generates a smooth pitch pattern from some pitch informations. In this system, the log magnitude approximation (LMA) filter is employed as parametric synthesizer. The LMA filter generates an acoustic waveform from the cepstrum in real time.