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Method and system for preselection of suitable units for concatenative speech

  • US 6,684,187 B1
  • Filed: 06/30/2000
  • Issued: 01/27/2004
  • Est. Priority Date: 06/30/2000
  • Status: Expired due to Term
First Claim
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1. A method of synthesizing speech from an input text using phonemes, the method comprising the steps:

  • a) creating a triphone preselection cost database including a plurality of all likely triphone combinations and generating a key to index each triphone in the database, wherein creating the triphone preselection cost database further comprises;

    1) selecting a predetermined triphone sequence u1-u2-u3; and

    2) calculating a preselection cost for each 5-phoneme sequence ua-u1-u2-u3-ub, where u2 is allowed to match any identically labeled phoneme in the database and the units ua and ub vary over the entire phoneme universe;

    b) retrieving a portion of the input text for synthesis as a phoneme sequence;

    c) comparing a retrieved phoneme, in context with its neighboring phonemes, with a plurality of N least cost triphone keys stored in the triphone preselection cost database;

    d) choosing, as candidates for synthesis, a list of units from the triphone preselection cost database that comprise a matching triphone key;

    e) repeating steps b) through d) for each phoneme in the input text;

    f) selecting the least cost path through the network of candidates;

    g) processing the phonemes selected in step f) into synthesized speech; and

    h) outputting the synthesized speech to an output device.

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