Kabushiki Kaisha Toshiba

Javier Latorre

Masami Akamine

Takehiko Kagoshima

Masahiro Morita

According to one embodiment, a speech synthesizer includes an analyzer, a first estimator, a selector, a generator, a second estimator, and a synthesizer. The analyzer analyzes text and extracts a linguistic feature. The first estimator selects a first prosody model adapted to the linguistic feature and estimates prosody information that maximizes a first likelihood representing probability of the selected first prosody model. The selector selects speech units that minimize a cost function determined in accordance with the prosody information. The generator generates a second prosody model that is a model of the prosody information of the speech units. The second estimator estimates prosody information that maximizes a third likelihood calculated on the basis of the first likelihood and a second likelihood representing probability of the second prosody model. The synthesizer generates synthetic speech by concatenating the speech units on the basis of the prosody information estimated by the second estimator.

Speech synthesizer, speech synthesizing method and program product

According to one embodiment, in a speech processing device, an extractor windows a part of the speech signal and extracts a partial waveform. A calculator performs frequency analysis of the partial waveform to calculate a frequency spectrum. An estimator generates an artificial waveform that is a waveform according to an interval between the pitch marks for each harmonic component having a frequency that is a predetermined multiple of a fundamental frequency of the speech signal and estimates harmonic spectral features representing characteristics of the frequency spectrum of the harmonic component from each of the artificial waveforms. A separator separates the partial waveform into a periodic component produced from periodic vocal-fold vibration as an acoustic source and an aperiodic component produced from aperiodic acoustic sources other than the vocal-fold vibration by using the respective harmonic spectral features and the frequency spectrum of the partial waveform.

Separating speech waveforms into periodic and aperiodic components, using artificial waveform generated from pitch marks

A speech processing apparatus, including a segmenting unit to divide a fundamental frequency signal of a speech signal corresponding to an input text into pitch segments, based on an alignment between samples of at least one given linguistic level included in the input text and the speech signal. Character strings of the input text are divided into the samples based on each linguistic level. A parameterizing unit generates a parametric representation of the pitch segments using a predetermined invertible operator and generates a group of first parameters in correspondence with each linguistic level. A descriptor generating unit generates, for each linguistic level, a descriptor that includes a set of features describing each sample in the input text and a model learning unit classifies the first parameters of each linguistic level of all speech signals in a memory into clusters based on the descriptor corresponding to the linguistic level.

Growing community of inventors

Tokyo, Japan

Javier Latorre