Quality Of Synthetic Speech: Perceptual Dimensions, Influencing Factors, And Instrumental Assessment (t-labs Series In Telecommunication Services)

This book reviews research towards perceptual quality dimensions of synthetic speech, compares these findings with the state of the art, and derives a set of five universal perceptual quality dimensions for TTS signals. They are: (i) naturalness of voice, (ii) prosodic quality, (iii) fluency and intelligibility, (iv) absence of disturbances, and (v) calmness. Moreover, a test protocol for the efficient indentification of those dimensions in a listening test is introduced. Furthermore, several factors influencing these dimensions are examined. In addition, different techniques for the instrumental quality assessment of TTS signals are introduced, reviewed and tested. Finally, the requirements for the integration of an instrumental quality measure into a concatenative TTS system are examined. Front Matter....Pages i-xvi Introduction....Pages 1-4 Speech Synthesis....Pages 5-18 Auditory and Instrumental Quality Evaluation Metrics....Pages 19-36 Perceptual Quality Dimensions....Pages 37-67 Influencing Factors on Perceptual Quality....Pages 69-100 Instrumental Quality Assessment....Pages 101-124 Requirements for the Integration of an Instrumental Quality Measure into a Concatenative TTS System....Pages 125-138 Conclusions and Future Work....Pages 139-145 Back Matter....Pages 147-157