The use of a generative model of F/sub 0/ contours for multilingual speech synthesis

Fujisaki, Hiroya; Ohno, Sumio

doi:10.1109/icosp.1998.770311

Cited by 19 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…The former study on F0 modeling has been considerably conducted in various speech units and several techniques such as utterance level (Fujisaki and Ohno, 1998;Fujisaki et al, 1990;Tao et al, 2006;Saito et al, 2002 Ni andHirose, 2006;Li et al, 2004), word and syllable levels (Fujisaki et al, 1990;Fujisaki and Sudo, 1971;Tran et al, 2006). In Thai speech, Fujisaki's model has been successfully applied for modeling of utterances, tones and words (Hiroya and Sumio, 2002;Seresangtakul and Takara, 2003;Seresangtakul and Takara, 2002).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Analytical Study on Fundamental Frequency Contours of Thai Expressive Speech Using Fujisaki's Model

Chomphan¹

2010

Journal of Computer Science

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Problem statement:In spontaneous speech communication, prosody is an important factor that must be taken into account, since the prosody effects on not only the naturalness but also the intelligibility of speech. Focusing on synthesis of Thai expressive speech, a number of systems has been developed for years. However, the expressive speech with various speaking styles has not been accomplished. To achieve the generation of expressive speech, we need to model the fundamental Frequency (F0) contours accurately to preserve the speech prosody. Approach: Therefore this study proposes an analysis of model parameters for Thai speech prosody with three speaking styles and two genders which is a preliminary work for speech synthesis. Fujisaki's modeling; a powerful tool to model the F0 contour has been adopted, while the speaking styles of happiness, sadness and reading have been considered. Seven derived parameters from the Fujisaki's model are as follows. The first parameter is baseline frequency which is the lowest level of F0 contour. The second and third parameters are the numbers of phrase commands and tone commands which reflect the frequencies of surges of the utterance in global and local levels, respectively. The fourth and fifth parameters are phrase command and tone command durations which reflect the speed of speaking and the length of a syllable, respectively. The sixth and seventh parameters are amplitudes of phrase command and tone command which reflect the energy of the global speech and the energy of local syllable. Results: In the experiments, each speaking style includes 200 samples of one sentence with male and female speech. Therefore our speech database contains 1200 utterances in total. The results show that most of the proposed parameters can distinguish three kinds of speaking styles explicitly. Conclusion: From the finding, it is a strong evidence to further apply the successful parameters in the speech synthesis systems or other speech processing technologies.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Analytical Study on Fundamental Frequency Contours of Thai Expressive Speech Using Fujisaki's Model

Chomphan¹

2010

Journal of Computer Science

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“…The former study on F0 modeling has been widely performed in various speech units and several techniques such as utterance level (Fujisaki and Ohno, 1998;Fujisaki et al, 1990;Tao et al, 2006;Saito andSakamoto, 2002 Ni andHirose, 2006;Li et al, 2004), word and syllable levels (Fujisaki et al, 1990). In Thai speech, Fujisaki's model has been successfully applied for modeling of utterances, tones and words (Hiroya and Sumio, 2002;Seresangtakul and Takara, 2002;Seresangtakul and Takara, 2003).…”

Section: Fundamental Frequency Contour (F0 Contour)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of Noises on the Analysis of Fundamental Frequency Contours for Thai Speech

Chomphan¹

2011

Journal of Computer Science

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Problem statement:In speech communication, noises from surrounding environments affect the communication quality with various aspects. The received speech quality should be analyzed to see how the important noises reduce the speech quality so that we can eliminate them in an appropriate way. Approach: This study presents a study on the analysis of the noise effects on Thai speech. Four kinds of noises; air conditioner, car, factory and train, are chosen to be simulated in the study. The various levels of signal-to-noise ratios are conducted. The root mean square error between the fundamental frequency contours of the corrupted speech and the clean speech is calculated. Finally, the analysis of the root mean square error in terms of comparisons among genders, the four kinds of noises and various levels of signal-to-noise ratios is performed. Results: In the experiments, 400 speech utterances of male and female are used as speech materials. The average values of root mean square error are calculated. The results show that the fundamental frequency contour of female speech is affected more than that of male speech. Comparing among four kinds of noises, the car noise has the highest influence, while the factory noise has the lowest influence. Moreover, the root mean square error is inversely proportional to the level of signal-to-noise ratio. Conclusion: From the finding, the noises from surrounding environments have affected the speech quality of fundamental frequency contour. This study is the preliminary knowledge to enhance the speech quality for further works such as speech synthesis systems or other speech processing technologies.

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“…The main factors causing these variations are tone coarticulation, tone enhancement/suppression and phrase intonation (Fujisaki and Ohno, 1998). In the conventional HMMbased speech synthesis approach, the speech features including F0 values are modeled statistically.…”

Section: Phrase Intonation Featuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Improvement of Tone Intelligibility for Average-Voice-Based Thai Speech Synthesis

WAN¹

2012

American Journal of Applied Sciences

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Problem statement: Tone intelligibility in speech synthesis is an important attribute that should be taken into account. The tone correctness of the synthetic speech is degraded considerably in the average-voice-based HMM-based Thai speech synthesis. The tying mechanism in the decision tree based context clustering without appropriate criterion causes unexpected tone neutralization. Incorporation of the phrase intonation to the context clustering process in the training stage was proposed early. However, the tone correctness is not satisfied. Approach: This study proposes a number of tonal features including tone-geometrical features and phrase intonation features to be exploited in the context clustering process of HMM training stage. Results: In the experiments, subjective evaluations of both average voice and adapted voice in terms of the intelligibility of tone are conducted. Effects on decision trees of the extracted features are also evaluated. By considering gender in training speech, two core experiments were conducted. The first experiment shows that the proposed tonal features can improve the tone intelligibility for female speech model above that of male speech model, while the second experiment shows that the proposed tonal features improve the tone intelligibility for gender dependent model than for gender independent model. Conclusion: All of the experimental results confirm that the tone correctness of the synthesized speech from the averagevoice-based HMM-based Thai speech synthesis is significantly improved when using most of the extracted features.

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The use of a generative model of F/sub 0/ contours for multilingual speech synthesis

Cited by 19 publications

References 9 publications

Analytical Study on Fundamental Frequency Contours of Thai Expressive Speech Using Fujisaki's Model

Analytical Study on Fundamental Frequency Contours of Thai Expressive Speech Using Fujisaki's Model

Effects of Noises on the Analysis of Fundamental Frequency Contours for Thai Speech

Improvement of Tone Intelligibility for Average-Voice-Based Thai Speech Synthesis

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