Integrating coding techniques into LP-based Mandarin text-to-speech synthesis

In this paper, speech coding techniques are integrated into a Mandarin text-to-speech system. By exploiting the intrinsic properties of Mandarin, we encode the acoustic features of 408 syllabic utterances into templates, each containing modeling parameters for speech synthesis. As a result, the developed TTS system demands merely 36 Kbytes to store all syllabic templates.In the synthesis stage, modeling parameters retrieved from the templates are modified according to the prosody estimated from a hierarchically layered model. To render a general view of the performance of this TTS system, we conduct listening tests and end up with 86.4% intelligibility and 97% comprehensibility. A simplified Mandarin TTS system is also implemented on an FPGA development board. The realization on an FPGA makes us to believe that such a TTS synthesizer can be easily incorporable with other portable devices as a voicing interface.

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