SPEECH SYNTHESIZER, NAVIGATION APPARATUS AND SPEECH SYNTHESIZING METHOD
First Claim
1. A speech synthesizer that executes speech synthesis processing for converting an input text to synthesized speech signals, comprising:
- an importance prediction unit that divides the input text into a plurality of components and estimates an importance level of each the component depending on the degree of how much each the component contributes to understanding the meaning of the text;
a load state acquisition unit that acquires a processing load state of the speech synthesizer;
a load control unit that, when executing a process of generating a synthesized speech signal of each the component, determines a processing load that is assigned to processing of each the component, based on the current processing load state of the speech synthesizer and the importance level; and
a synthesis processing unit that executes the process of generating a synthesized speech signal of each the component, based on the processing load determined by the load control unit.
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Abstract
Included in a speech synthesizer, a natural language processing unit divides text data, input from a text input unit, into a plurality of components (particularly, words). An importance prediction unit estimates an importance level of each component according to the degree of how much each component contributes to understanding when a listener hears synthesized speech. Then, the speech synthesizer determines a processing load based on the device state when executing synthesis processing and the importance level. Included in the speech synthesizer, a synthesizing control unit and a wave generation unit reduce the processing time for a phoneme with a low importance level by curtailing its processing load (relatively degrading its sound quality), allocate a part of the processing time, made available by this reduction, to the processing time of a phoneme with a high importance level, and generates synthesized speech in which important words are easily audible.
18 Citations
8 Claims
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1. A speech synthesizer that executes speech synthesis processing for converting an input text to synthesized speech signals, comprising:
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an importance prediction unit that divides the input text into a plurality of components and estimates an importance level of each the component depending on the degree of how much each the component contributes to understanding the meaning of the text; a load state acquisition unit that acquires a processing load state of the speech synthesizer; a load control unit that, when executing a process of generating a synthesized speech signal of each the component, determines a processing load that is assigned to processing of each the component, based on the current processing load state of the speech synthesizer and the importance level; and a synthesis processing unit that executes the process of generating a synthesized speech signal of each the component, based on the processing load determined by the load control unit. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)
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8. A speech synthesizing method for a speech synthesizer that executes speech synthesis processing for converting an input text to synthesized speech signals, the speech synthesizing method comprising:
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an importance estimation step dividing the input text into a plurality of components and estimating an importance level of each the component depending on the degree of how much each the component contributes to understanding the meaning of the text; a load state acquisition step acquiring a processing load state of the speech synthesizer; a load control step, when executing a process of generating a synthesized speech signal of each the component, determining a processing load that is assigned to processing of each the component, based on the current processing load state of the speech synthesizer and the importance level; and a synthesis processing step executing the process of generating a synthesized speech signal of each the component, based on the processing load determined by the load control step.
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Specification