Text to speech method and system using voice characteristic dependent weighting
US9454963B2 · kind B2 · utility
Assignee
Inventors
Key dates
| Filing date | Mar 13, 2013 |
| Grant date | Sep 27, 2016 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | Aug 8, 2033 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC G)Physics
- CPC primaryG10L2021/0135
- WIPO fieldComputer technology
- WIPO sectorElectrical engineering
Abstract
A text-to-speech method for simulating a plurality of different voice characteristics includes dividing inputted text into a sequence of acoustic units; selecting voice characteristics for the inputted text; converting the sequence of acoustic units to a sequence of speech vectors using an acoustic model having a plurality of model parameters provided in clusters each having at least one sub-cluster and describing probability distributions which relate an acoustic unit to a speech vector; and outputting the sequence of speech vectors as audio with the selected voice characteristics. A parameter of a predetermined type of each probability distribution is expressed as a weighted sum of parameters of the same type using voice characteristic dependent weighting. In converting the sequence of acoustic units to a sequence of speech vectors, the voice characteristic dependent weights for the selected voice characteristics are retrieved for each cluster such that there is one weight per sub-cluster.
Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.