Deterministic annealing EM algorithm for developing TTS system in Gujarati

Abstract

The generalized statistical framework of Hidden Markov Model (HMM) has been successfully applied from the field of speech recognition to speech synthesis. In this work, we have applied HMM-based Speech Synthesis System (HTS) method to Gujarati language. Adaption and evaluation of HTS for Gujarati language has been done here. Evaluation of HTS system built using Gujarati data is done in terms of naturalness and speech intelligibility. Apart from this, a conventional EM algorithm-based HTS and recently proposed Deterministic Annealing EM algorithm-based HTS has been applied to Gujarati (a low resourced language) and it's relative comparison has been done. It has been found that HTS in Gujarati has very high intelligibility. It was verified from ABtest that 70.5 % times DAEM-based HTS has preferred over EM-based HTS developed for Gujarati language.