HMM-Based Distributed Text-to-Speech Synthesis Incorporating Speaker-Adaptive Training

Abstract

In this paper, a hidden Markov model (HMM) based distributed text-to-speech (TTS) system is proposed to synthesize the voices of various speakers in a client-server framework. The proposed system is based on speaker-adaptive training for constructing HMMs corresponding to a target speaker, and its computational complexity is balanced by distributing the processing modules of the TTS system at both the client and server to achieve a real-time operation. In other words, fewer complex operations, such as text inputs and HMM-based speech synthesis, are conducted by the client, while speaker-adaptive training, which is a very complex operation, is assigned to the server. It is shown from performanceevaluation that the proposed TTS system operates in real time and provides good synthesized speech quality in terms of intelligibility and similarity.