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. 2014 Jan 22:2014:627189.
doi: 10.1155/2014/627189. eCollection 2014.

Voice quality modelling for expressive speech synthesis

Carlos Monzo  1 , Ignasi Iriondo  2 , Joan Claudi Socoró  2
Affiliations

Voice quality modelling for expressive speech synthesis

Carlos Monzo et al. ScientificWorldJournal. .

Abstract

This paper presents the perceptual experiments that were carried out in order to validate the methodology of transforming expressive speech styles using voice quality (VoQ) parameters modelling, along with the well-known prosody (F 0, duration, and energy), from a neutral style into a number of expressive ones. The main goal was to validate the usefulness of VoQ in the enhancement of expressive synthetic speech in terms of speech quality and style identification. A harmonic plus noise model (HNM) was used to modify VoQ and prosodic parameters that were extracted from an expressive speech corpus. Perception test results indicated the improvement of obtained expressive speech styles using VoQ modelling along with prosodic characteristics.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
A block diagram for the proposed expressive speech styles transformation methodology.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Quality MOS test results for the configurations of “Natural,” “ResHNM,” “HNMPro,” “HNMProJiSh,” and “HNMProVoQ.”
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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