METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR EXEMPLARY MORPHING COMPUTER SYSTEM BACKGROUND

• US 20170249953A1
• Filed: 04/15/2014
• Published: 08/31/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 04/15/2014
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Speech Morphing Systems, Inc.
• Original Assignee: Speech Morphing Systems, Inc.
• Inventors: Yassa, Fathy, Reaves, Benjamin, Pearson, Steve
• Granted Patent: US 10,008,216 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 13/06 Elementary speech units used in speech synthesisers; Concatenation rules
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/02 Feature extraction for speech recognition; Selection of recognition unit
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 2015/022 Demisyllables, biphones or triphones being the recognition units
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 2015/025 Phonemes, fenemes or fenones being the recognition units
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 2021/0135 Voice conversion or morphing
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 21/013 Adapting to target pitch
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 25/51 for comparison or discrimination
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 25/90 Pitch determination of speech signals

Abstract

Method and apparatus for reducing a size of databases required for recorded speech data.

Claims

1. An exemplary computer system configured to obtain diphones and morph them into a target speakers voice, comprising a first module configured as a speech recognizer, a second module configured as a pitch extractor, a third module configured as a diphone database, and a fourth module configured as a unit selector.

2. The speech recognizer of claim 1, where the speech recognizer is configured to obtain an audio waveform from a first source speaker and converts said audio waveform into a sequence of phonemes.

3. The pitch extractor of claim 1 where the pitch extractor is configured to determine the pitch contour of each diphone.

4. The unit selector of claim 1 where the unit selector is configured to obtain the sequence of phonemes from the speech recognizer, select a first diphone from the speech recognizer, obtain a list of potential candidate matches from the Diphone database, compare the transcription labels of the first diphone with the transcripts labels of each potential candidate diphone.

5. The method of claim 4 of comparing transcription labels by comparing the consonants, determining the consonant distance, assigning a weight, comparing the vowels, determining the vowel distance, assigning a lesser weight.

6. The unit selector of claim 1 where the unit selector is configured compare pitch contours between the first diphone and the potential candidate diphones comprising the method of calculating the difference between the pitch at the beginning and end of the first diphone, calculating the pitch at the beginning and end of each potential candidate diphone, then calculate the difference.

7. The unit selector of claim 1 where the unit selector is configured to compare the speaking rate between the first diphone and the potential candidates diphones comprising the method of calculating the difference between the speaking rate of the first diphone and the speaking rate of each of the potential candidate diphones.

8. The unit selector of claim 1 where the unit selector is configured to match the formants of the surrounding diphones comprising the method of calculating the difference between the formants at the end of the first diphone with the formants at the beginning of each potential candidate diphone.

9. The method of matching formants in claim 8 further comprising the method of calculating the difference between formants for the first three formants of both the first diphone and each candidate diphone.

10. The unit selector of claim 1 where the unit selector is configure to match the pitch of the surrounding diphones comprising the method of calculating the difference between the pitch at the end of the first diphone with the pitch at the beginning of each potential candidate diphone.

11. The unit selector of claim 1 where the unit selector makes a weighted average of the difference between the first diphone and each potential candidate diphone.

12. The method of claim 11 where the label matching is weighted at 42%.

13. The method of claim 11 where the pitch contour match is weighted at 25%.

14. The method of claim 11, where the pitch matching is weighted at 8%

15. The method of claim 11, where the speaking rate matching is weighted at 17%.

16. The method of claim 11, where the formant matching is weighted at 8%.

17. The unit selector of claim 1 where the unit selector re-scores the diphone matches.

26. The method of matching formants in claim 8 further comprising the method of calculating the difference between formants for the first three formants of both the first diphone and each candidate diphone.

18. An exemplary computer system configured to obtain diphones and morph them into a target speakers voice, comprising a first module configured as a pronunciation generator, a second module configured as an intonation generator, a third module configured as a diphone database, and a fourth module configured as a unit selector.

19. The pronunciation generator of claim 18, where the pronunciation generator is configured to convert the written text into the phonetic alphabet.

20. The pitch extractor of claim 18 where the intonation generator is configured to generate the pitch from the typed text.

21. The unit selector of claim 18 where the unit selector is configured to obtain the sequence of phonemes from the pronunciation generator and intonation generator, select a first diphone, obtain a list of potential candidate matches from the Diphone database, and compare the transcription labels of the first diphone with the transcripts labels of each potential candidate diphone.

22. The method of claim 21 of comparing transcription labels by comparing the consonants, determining the consonant distance, assigning a weight, comparing the vowels, determining the vowel distance, assigning a lesser weight.

23. The unit selector of claim 18 where the unit selector is configured compare pitch contours between the first diphone and the potential candidate diphones comprising the method of calculating the difference between the pitch at the beginning and end of the first diphone, calculating the pitch at the beginning and end of each potential candidate diphone, then calculate the difference.

24. The unit selector of claim 18 where the unit selector is configured to compare the speaking rate between the first diphone and the potential candidates diphones comprising the method of calculating the difference between the speaking rate of the first diphone and the speaking rate of each of the potential candidate diphones.

25. The unit selector of claim 18 where the unit selector is configured to match the formants of the surrounding diphones comprising the method of calculating the difference between the formants at the end of the first diphone with the formants at the beginning of each potential candidate diphone.

27. The unit selector of claim 18 where the unit selector is configure to match the pitch of the surrounding diphones comprising the method of calculating the difference between the pitch at the end of the first diphone with the pitch at the beginning of each potential candidate diphone.

28. The unit selector of claim 18 where the unit selector makes a weighted average of the difference between the first diphone and each potential candidate diphone.

29. The method of claim 28 where the label matching is weighted at 42%.

30. The method of claim 28 where the pitch contour match is weighted at 25%.

31. The method of claim 28, where the pitch matching is weighted at 8%

32. The method of claim 28, where the speaking rate matching is weighted at 17%.

33. The method of claim 28, where the formant matching is weighted at 8%.

34. The unit selector of claim 18 where the unit selector re-scores the diphone matches.