The present invention relates to the field of synthesizing of speech or music, and more particularly without limitation, to the field of text-to-speech synthesis.
The function of a text-to-speech (TTS) synthesis system is to synthesize speech from a generic text in a given language. Nowadays, TTS systems have been put into practical operation for many applications, such as access to databases through the telephone network or aid to handicapped people. One method to synthesize speech is by concatenating elements of a recorded set of subunits of speech such as demisyllables or polyphones. The majority of successful commercial systems employ the concatenation of polyphones. The polyphones comprise groups of two (diphones), three (triphones) or more phones and may be determined from nonsense words, by segmenting the desired grouping of phones at stable spectral regions. In a concatenation based synthesis, the conversation of the transition between two adjacent phones is crucial to assure the quality of the synthesized speech. With the choice of polyphones as the basic subunits, the transition between two adjacent phones is preserved in the recorded subunits, and the concatenation is carried out between similar phones.
Before the synthesis, however, the phones must have their duration and pitch modified in order to fulfil the prosodic constraints of the new words containing those phones. This processing is necessary to avoid the production of a monotonous sounding synthesized speech. In a TTS system, a prosodic module performs this function. To allow the duration and pitch modifications in the recorded subunits, many concatenation based TTS systems employ the time-domain pitch-synchronous overlap-add (TD-PSOLA) (E. Moulines and F. Charpentier, “Pitch synchronous waveform processing techniques for text-to-speech synthesis using diphones,” Speech Commun., vol. 9, pp. 453-467, 1990) model of synthesis. When the signal to be synthesized is required to have an extended duration this is accomplished by repeating the pitch bells, which have been obtained from the original signal. This repetition process is illustrated in
A common disadvantage of such PSOLA methods is that an extreme duration manipulation introduces audible transitions between the sequences into the signal. In particular this is a problem when the original sound is a hybrid sound like voiced fricatives having both a noisy and a periodic component. The repetition of pitch bells introduces periodicity in the noisy components, which makes the synthesized signal sound unnatural.
The present invention therefore aims to provide an improved method of synthesizing a sound signal, in particular for extreme duration modifications, like for singing.
The present invention provides for a method of synthesizing a sound signal based on an original signal in order to manipulate the duration of the original signal. In particular, the present invention enables extreme duration and pitch modifications of the original signal without audible artefacts. This is especially useful for synthesizing of singing where extreme duration manipulations in the order of 4 to 100 times of the original signal can occur.
In essence, the present invention is based on the observation that prior art PSOLA methods introduce artefacts into a synthesized signal after duration manipulation because the transition from one chain of repeating pitch bells to the next is audible. This effect which is experienced when a prior art PSOLA type method is employed for extreme duration manipulations is particularly detrimental for hybrid sounds containing both a noisy and a periodic component.
In accordance with the invention, pitch bells are randomly selected from the original signal for each of the required pitch bell locations of the signal to be synthesized. This way the introduction of periodicity in the noisy components can be avoided and the naturalness of the original sound is preserved. In accordance with a preferred embodiment of the invention the original sound is a voiced fricative having both a noisy and a periodic component. Application of the present invention to such voiced fricatives is especially beneficial.
In accordance with a further preferred embodiment of the invention a raised cosine is used for windowing of voiced fricatives. For unvoiced sound intervals a sine window is used which has the advantage that the total signal envelope in power domain remains about constant. Unlike a periodic signal, when two noise samples are added, the total sum can be smaller than the absolute value of any of the two samples. This is because the signals are (mostly) not in-phase; the sine window adjusts for this effect and removes the envelope-modulation.
In accordance with a further preferred embodiment of the invention the original sound signal has periods which are spectrally alike and which have basically the same information content. Such periods, which are voiced, are classified by a first classifier and such periods which are unvoiced are classified by means of a second classifier.
In accordance with a further preferred embodiment of the invention the classification information of the original signal is stored in a computer system, such as a text-to-speech system. Intervals of the original signal which are classified as voiced or unvoiced steady periods being spectrally alike are processed in accordance with the present invention whereby a raised cosine window is used for voiced intervals and a sine window is used for unvoiced intervals.
In the following preferred embodiments of the invention are described in greater detail by making reference to the drawings in which:
In previous relation, m is the length of the window and n is the running index.
When the original signal is an unvoiced sound signal it is preferred to use the following window.
The time domain of the signal to be synthesized is illustrated by time axis 204. The signal to be synthesized is required to have a duration of yT, where y can be any number, for example y=4 or y=6 or y=20 or y=50 or y=100.
The period p does also determine the pitch bell locations j on time axis 204. Like on time axis 200 the pitch bell locations are spaced apart by period p. For each of the required pitch bell locations j, a random selection of a location of a pitch bell i in the time domain of the time axis 200 is made. In the example considered here there is a number of 6 pitch bells which are obtained by windowing of the original signal in the time domain of time axis 200. To select one of these obtained pitch bells for a pitch bell location j a random number between 1 and 6 is generated. This way a random selection from the available pitch bells on pitch bell locations i=1 to i=6 is made. This process is repeated for all required pitch bell locations j on time axis 204. For example a pitch bell for the required pitch bell location j=1 is selected by generating a random number between 1 and 6. In the example considered here, the number 6 is obtained such that the pitch bell obtained from pitch bell location i=6 on the time axis 200 is selected for the required pitch bell location j=1 on the time axis 204. Likewise a random number is generated for the required pitch bell location j=2. The random number is 4 in this example such that the pitch bell at pitch bell location i=4 on time axis 200 is selected for the required pitch bell location j=2. This process is performed for all required pitch bell locations j=1 to j=z on time axis 204. Due to the random selection of the pitch bells from the domain of the original signal, intervals 106, 108, . . . are avoided (cf.
Sound signal 404 is obtained from sound signal 400 in accordance with the present invention by randomly selecting pitch bells obtained from the sound signal 400 for the required pitch bell locations in the time domain of the synthesized sound signal 404. In the example considered here the synthesized sound signal 404 is y=5 times longer than the original sound signal 400. Also the frequency spectrum 406 of the sound signal 404 is shown in
Module 510 serves to select pitch bells from the set of pitch bells obtained from the original sound signal. Module 510 is coupled to pseudo random number generator 512. For each of the required pitch bell locations in the domain of the signal to be synthesized, a pseudo random number is generated by pseudo random number generator 512. By means of these random numbers selections of pitch bells from the set of pitch bells are made by module 510 in order to provide a randomly selected pitch bell for each of the required pitch bell locations in the time domain of the signal to be synthesized. Module 514 serves to perform an overlap and add operation on the selected pitch bells in the time domain of the signal to be synthesized. This way the synthesized signal having the required duration is obtained.
It is to be noted that the present invention can be applied on steady regions. For example, such a steady region can be a vowel or a noisy voiced sound like /z/. Hence, the invention is not restricted to ‘hybrid’ sounds.
Furthermore, it is to be noted that the synthesized signal does not need to have the same pitch (fundamental frequency) as the original. In some applications it is required to change the pitch, for example in order to synthesize singing. In order to accomplish this change of fundamental frequency in the synthesized signal, the period locations in the synthesized signal will be placed more closely or more away from each other than the original. This does not otherwise change the synthesis procedure.
Further it is to be noted that the present invention is not restricted to a certain choice of a window. Instead of raised cosine or sine windows other windows can be used such as triangular windows.
Number | Date | Country | Kind |
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02078848.5 | Sep 2002 | EP | regional |
Filing Document | Filing Date | Country | Kind | 371c Date |
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PCT/IB03/03381 | 8/5/2003 | WO | 3/15/2005 |