Concatenation cost in speech synthesis for acoustic unit sequential pair using hash table and default concatenation cost

• US 9,691,376 B2
• Filed: 12/08/2015
• Issued: 06/27/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 04/30/1999
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Cerence Operating Company (Cerence Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Nuance Communications, Inc. (Microsoft Corporation)
• Inventors: Beutnagel, Mark Charles, Mohri, Mehryar, Riley, Michael Dennis
• Primary Examiner(s): Lerner, Martin
• Application Number:
  US14/962,198
• Publication Number:
  US 20160093288A1
• Time in Patent Office: 567 Days
• Field of Search: 704258, 704260, 704262, 704266
• 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 process can record concatenation costs of unit sequential pairs to a concatenation cost database for speech synthesis by synthesizing speech from a text, identifying an acoustic unit sequential pair in the speech, searching for a concatenation cost for the acoustic unit sequential pair in a database using a hash table for the database, and when the concatenation cost is not found in the database, assigning a default value as the concatenation cost for the acoustic unit sequential pair.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

synthesizing speech from a text;

identifying an acoustic unit sequential pair in the speech;

searching for a concatenation cost for the acoustic unit sequential pair in a database using a hash table for the database; and

when the concatenation cost is not found in the database, assigning a default value as the concatenation cost for the acoustic unit sequential pair.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising synthesizing future speech using the default value as the concatenation cost.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein a most common acoustic unit sequential pair does not have an associated concatenation cost stored in the database prior to the assigning.

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

5. The method of claim 1, wherein assigning the default value as 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 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 an acoustic unit sequential pair in the speech;

searching for a concatenation cost for the acoustic unit sequential pair in a database using a hash table for the database; and

when the concatenation cost is not found in the database, assigning a default value as the concatenation cost for the acoustic unit sequential pair.

9. The system of claim 8, the computer-readable storage medium having additional instructions stored which, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to perform operations comprising synthesizing future speech using the default value as the concatenation cost.

10. The system of claim 8, wherein a most common acoustic unit sequential pair does not have an associated concatenation cost stored in the database prior to the assigning.

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

12. The system of claim 8, wherein assigning the default value as 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 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 an acoustic unit sequential pair in the speech;

searching for a concatenation cost for the acoustic unit sequential pair in a database using a hash table for the database; and

when the concatenation cost is not found in the database, assigning a default value as the concatenation cost for the acoustic unit sequential pair.

16. The non-transitory computer-readable storage device of claim 15, having additional instructions stored which, when executed by the computing device, cause the computing device to perform operations comprising synthesizing future speech using the default value as the concatenation cost.

17. The non-transitory computer-readable storage device of claim 15, wherein a most common acoustic unit sequential pair does not have an associated concatenation cost stored in the database prior to the assigning.

18. The non-transitory computer-readable storage device of claim 15, wherein the database contains a subset 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 default value as 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.