logo Idiap Research Institute        
 [BibTeX] [Marc21]
Subjective Evaluation of Join Cost and Smoothing Methods for Unit Selection Speech Synthesis
Type of publication: Idiap-RR
Citation: vepa_rr05-34
Number: Idiap-RR-34-2005
Year: 2005
Institution: IDIAP
Abstract: In unit selection-based concatenative speech synthesis, join cost (also known as concatenation cost,',','), which measures how well two units can be joined together, is one of the main criteria for selecting appropriate units from the inventory. Usually, some form of local parameter smoothing is also needed to disguise the remaining discontinuities. This paper presents a subjective evaluation of three join cost functions and three smoothing methods. We also describe the design and performance of a listening test. The three join cost functions were taken from our previous study, where we proposed join cost functions derived from spectral distances, which have good correlations with perceptual scores obtained for a range of concatenation discontinuities. This evaluation allows us to further validate their ability to predict concatenation discontinuities. The units for synthesis stimuli are obtained from a state-of-the-art unit selection text-to-speech system: rVoice from Rhetorical Systems Ltd. In this paper, we report listeners' preferences for each join cost in combination with each smoothing method.
Userfields: ipdmembership={speech},
Keywords:
Projects Idiap
Authors Vepa, Jithendra
King, Simon
Crossref by vepa_ieee_sap_2006
Added by: [UNK]
Total mark: 0
Attachments
  • rr05-34.pdf
  • rr05-34.ps.gz
Notes