Evaluation of speech synthesis techniques in a comprehension task

Abstract Six types of speech synthesis were evaluated for comprehensibility: standard linear predictive coding analysis/ resynthesis; pitch synchronous analysis/resynthesis; pitch synchronous multi-pulse analysis/resynthesis; and three PSOLA (pitch synchronous overlap-and-add) techniques. The relative comprehensibility of the synthesis types was tested by using the synthesised speech to convey information that subjects needed in order to perform a diagram-based multiple-choice task.