Speaker adaptation for Slovak statistical parametric speech synthesis based on hidden Markov models

In this paper, the first experiments with the speaker adaptation for Slovak statistical parametric speech synthesis based on the hidden Markov models are described. The implementation of two new Slovak voices based on the model adaptation technique consisted of small speech corpora design, which were used for the adaptation procedure and the processing of Slovak automatic speech recognition corpora, which were used for the average voice training is described. In the performed listening subjective tests, male and female speech generated from the regularly trained and adapted models was compared with the help of the opinion score and the semantically unpredictable sentences tests. The obtained results showed a high potential of this technique in case of Slovak language, because we manage to get a new intelligible and relatively natural sounding artificial speech with the small amount of data.