Personal message service with enhanced text to speech synthesis
US7027568B1 · kind B1 · utility
Assignee
Inventors
Key dates
| Filing date | Oct 10, 1997 |
| Grant date | Apr 11, 2006 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | Oct 10, 2017 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC H)Electricity
- CPC primaryH04M2201/60
- WIPO fieldTelecommunications
- WIPO sectorElectrical engineering
Abstract
A server in a network gathers textual information, such as news items, E-mail and the like. From that information, the server develops or identifies messages for use by individual subscribers. The same server that accumulates the text messages or another server in the network converts the textual information in each message to a sequence of speech synthesizer instructions. The converted messages, containing the sequences of speech synthesizer instructions, are transmitted to each identified subscriber's terminal device. A synthesizer in the terminal generates an audio waveform signal, representing the speech information, in response to the instructions. In the preferred embodiment, the terminals utilize concatenative type speech synthesizers, each of which has an associated vocabulary of stored fundamental sound samples. The instructions identify the sound samples, in order. The instructions also provide parameters for controlling characteristics of the signal generated during waveform synthesis for each sound sample in each sequence. For example, the instructions may specify the pitch, duration, amplitude, attack envelope and decay envelope for each sample. The division of the tex…
Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.