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Evaluation of speaker mimic technology for personalizing SGD voices

  • Esther Klabbers
  • , Alexander Kain
  • , Jan P.H. Van Santen

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

In this paper, we demonstrate the use of state-of-the-art speech technology to transform speech from a source speaker to mimic a particular target speaker with the intention of providng personalized voices to users of Speech Generating Devices (SGDs). This speaker mimicry (SM) capability allows us to use high-quality acoustic inventories from professional speakers and transform them to a different target speaker using a very limited set of sentences from that speaker. This technology targets future SGD users who still have a limited vocabulary or available previous recordings. The results of a perceptual study show that listeners can identify which SM voices most resemble their respective target voices.1

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 11th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association, INTERSPEECH 2010
PublisherInternational Speech Communication Association
Pages2154-2157
Number of pages4
StatePublished - 2010

Publication series

NameProceedings of the 11th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association, INTERSPEECH 2010

Funding

1This project was funded by NIH STTR grant 1R41DC008712-01: User Adaptation of AAC Voices and the Nancy Lurie Marks foundation project “In Your Own Voice: Personal Augmentative and Alternative Communication Voices for Minimally Verbal Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders” and was a collaboration between Biospeech, Inc. and OHSU. OHSU and the authors have a significant financial interest in BioSpeech, Inc., a company that may have a commercial interest in the results of this research and technology. This potential conflict was reviewed and managed by OHSU and the Integrity Program Oversight Council. This project was funded by NIH STTR grant 1R41DC008712-01: User Adaptation of AAC Voices and the Nancy Lurie Marks foundation project “In Your Own Voice: Personal Augmentative and Alternative Communication Voices for Minimally Verbal Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders” and was a collaboration between Biospeech, Inc. and OHSU. OHSU and the authors have a significant financial interest in BioSpeech, Inc., a company that may have a commercial interest in the results of this research and technology. This potential conflict was reviewed and managed by OHSU and the Integrity Program Oversight Council.

FundersFunder number
AAC Voices
BioSpeech, Inc.
Integrity Program Oversight Council
NIH STTR1R41DC008712-01
Oregon State University/Oregon Health and Science University
Nancy Lurie Marks Family Foundation

    Keywords

    • Perceptual evaluation
    • Prosody modeling
    • Speech synthesis
    • Voice transformation

    ASJC Scopus subject areas

    • Language and Linguistics
    • Speech and Hearing
    • Human-Computer Interaction
    • Signal Processing
    • Software
    • Modeling and Simulation

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