Title :
Specific acoustic unit processing in concatenative Romanian speech synthesis used for talking agents
Author :
Negrescu, Cristian ; Ciobanu, Amelia ; Ilie, Marija D.
Author_Institution :
Telecommun. Dept., Politeh. Univ. of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania
Abstract :
In this paper we present a number of operations involving the manipulation of acoustic units necessary for creating a Romanian speech synthesis database. We propose a recording technique based on the newly introduced concept of the checkup word, we develop an acoustic unit extraction algorithm and we advance a set of identification markers. Also we propose a simple and efficient sound level normalization method based on the checkup word, which proved to have similar results when compared to a sophisticated method based on automatic gain control. Moreover, the architecture of the Romanian speech synthesis module, also detailed in this paper, is integrated with a Romanian-specific 3D visual speech simulation model resulting the very first application of a Romanian 3D talking head. Preliminary listening tests revealed a 4.5 mean opinion score on a five point Likert scale regarding the synchronization performance of the audiovisual stream.
Keywords :
acoustic signal processing; audio databases; automatic gain control; digital simulation; feature extraction; natural language processing; speech synthesis; Likert scale; Romanian 3D talking head; Romanian-specific 3D visual speech simulation model; acoustic unit extraction algorithm; acoustic unit manipulation; acoustic unit processing; audiovisual stream synchronization performance; automatic gain control; checkup word; concatenative Romanian speech synthesis database; identification markers; mean opinion score; recording technique; sound level normalization method; talking agents; Acoustics; Algorithm design and analysis; Databases; Solid modeling; Speech; Speech synthesis; Three-dimensional displays; 3D talking agents; acoustic unit database; speech synthesis;
Conference_Titel :
Speech Technology and Human - Computer Dialogue (SpeD), 2013 7th Conference on
Conference_Location :
Cluj-Napoca
DOI :
10.1109/SpeD.2013.6682666