Unit-Selection Speech Synthesis Method Using Words as Search Units

Hiroyuki Segi
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Hiroyuki Segi: Department of Computer and Information Science, Seikei University, Tokyo, Japan

International Journal of Multimedia Data Engineering and Management (IJMDEM), 2016, vol. 7, issue 2, 1-15

Abstract: Unit-selection speech-synthesis systems have been proposed. In most of the unit-selection speech-synthesis systems, search units are rather short such as syllables, phonemes and diphones. However, when applied to large speech databases, shorter units produce more voice-waveform candidates and a larger speech database cannot be used without narrow pruning for practical use. Narrow pruning impairs the quality of the synthesized speech. Here the author examined the possibility of using words as search units. Subjective evaluations indicated that 70% of the speech synthesized by the proposed method sounded more natural than that synthesized by a conventional method. The five-point mean opinion score of the synthesized speech was 3.5, and 21% was judged to sound as natural as human speech. These results demonstrate the effectiveness of unit-selection speech synthesis using words as search units.

Date: 2016
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