Recording concatenation costs of most common acoustic unit sequential pairs to a concatenation cost database for speech synthesis

• US 9,236,044 B2
• Filed: 07/18/2014
• Issued: 01/12/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 04/30/1999
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Cerence Operating Company (Cerence Inc.)
• Original Assignee: AT&T Intellectual Property I LP (AT&T, Inc.)
• Inventors: Beutnagel, Mark Charles, Mohri, Mehryar, Riley, Michael Dennis
• Primary Examiner(s): Lerner, Martin
• Application Number:
  US14/335,302
• Publication Number:
  US 20140330567A1
• Time in Patent Office: 543 Days
• Field of Search: 704/258, 704/260, 704/262, 704/263, 704/266
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 13/00 Speech synthesis; Text to speech systems
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 13/027 Concept to speech synthesisers; Generation of natural phrases from machine-based concepts generation of parameters for speech synthesis out of text G10L13/08
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 13/07 Concatenation rules
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 13/08 Text analysis or generation of parameters for speech synthesis out of text, e.g. grapheme to phoneme translation, prosody generation or stress or intonation determination

Abstract

A speech synthesis system can record concatenation costs of most common acoustic unit sequential pairs to a concatenation cost database for speech synthesis by synthesizing speech from a text, identifying a most common acoustic unit sequential pair in the speech, assigning a concatenation cost to the most common acoustic sequential pair, and recording the concatenation cost of the most common acoustic sequential pair to a concatenation cost database.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

synthesizing speech from a text;

identifying a most common acoustic unit sequential pair in the speech;

assigning a concatenation cost to the most common acoustic sequential pair; and

recording the concatenation cost of the most common acoustic sequential pair to a concatenation cost database.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the most common acoustic unit sequential pair does not have a cost recorded in the concatenation cost database prior to the recording.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising synthesizing the speech using the concatenation cost.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the concatenation cost database contains a portion of all possible concatenation costs associated with a list of acoustic units.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein assigning the concatenation cost further comprises deriving an actual concatenation cost.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the concatenation cost comprises a weighted sum of subcosts across phones.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the concatenation cost database stores acoustic units in linear predictive coding parameters.

8. A system comprising:

a processor; and

a computer-readable storage medium having instructions stored which, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to perform operations comprising;

synthesizing speech from a text;

identifying a most common acoustic unit sequential pair in the speech;

assigning a concatenation cost to the most common acoustic sequential pair; and

recording the concatenation cost of the most common acoustic sequential pair to a concatenation cost database.

9. The system of claim 8, wherein the most common acoustic unit sequential pair does not have a cost recorded in the concatenation cost database prior to the recording.

10. The system of claim 8, the computer-readable storage medium having additional instructions stored which result in operations comprising synthesizing the speech using the concatenation cost.

11. The system of claim 8, wherein the concatenation cost database contains a portion of all possible concatenation costs associated with a list of acoustic units.

12. The system of claim 8, wherein assigning the concatenation cost further comprises deriving an actual concatenation cost.

13. The system of claim 8, wherein the concatenation cost comprises a weighted sum of subcosts across phones.

14. The system of claim 8, wherein the concatenation cost database stores acoustic units in linear predictive coding parameters.

15. A non-transitory computer-readable storage device having instructions stored which, when executed by a computing device, cause the computing device to perform operations comprising:

synthesizing speech from a text;

identifying a most common acoustic unit sequential pair in the speech;

assigning a concatenation cost to the most common acoustic sequential pair; and

recording the concatenation cost of the most common acoustic sequential pair to a concatenation cost database.

16. The non-transitory computer-readable storage device of claim 15, wherein the most common acoustic unit sequential pair does not have a cost recorded in the concatenation cost database prior to the recording.

17. The non-transitory computer-readable storage device of claim 15, having additional instructions stored which result in operations comprising synthesizing the speech using the concatenation cost.

18. The non-transitory computer-readable storage device of claim 15, wherein the concatenation cost database contains a portion of all possible concatenation costs associated with a list of acoustic units.

19. The non-transitory computer-readable storage device of claim 15, wherein assigning the concatenation cost further comprises deriving an actual concatenation cost.

20. The non-transitory computer-readable storage device of claim 15, wherein the concatenation cost comprises a weighted sum of subcosts across phones.