ISCA Archive Interspeech 2009
ISCA Archive Interspeech 2009

Assessing a speaker for fast speech in unit selection speech synthesis

Donata Moers, Petra Wagner

This paper describes work in progress concerning the adequate modeling of fast speech in unit selection speech synthesis systems, mostly having in mind blind and visually impaired users. Initially, a survey of the main characteristics of fast speech will be given. Subsequently, strategies for fast speech production will be discussed. Certain requirements concerning the ability of a speaker of a fast speech unit selection inventory are drawn. The following section deals with a perception study where a selected speaker’s ability to speak fast is investigated. To conclude, a preliminary perceptual analysis of the recordings for the speech synthesis corpus is presented.