Product category:
Networking Hardware
News Release from: Aculab | Subject: TTS on Prosody
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 19 March 2002
DSP-based speech synthesis speaks five
languages
Aculab has unveiled the latest version of its highly acclaimed free text-to-speech (TTS) software, which now features five languages, and runs on its Prosody DSP resource cards.
Aculab has unveiled the latest version of its highly acclaimed text-to-speech (TTS) software, which now features five languages, including Latin American Spanish, as well as the world's first variants in voice styles Providing a number of preconfigured versions for each voice, Aculab's new release of TTS allows developers to choose from up to 10 stylistic variants
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 28 Feb 2002 at 8.00am (UK)
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These include a range of formal, semi formal and casual options for both male and female voices.
Voice styles can provide useful alternatives, not only to the degree of formality but to attitudes or tones of voice, enabling different personalities to be portrayed.
For example, one of Aculab's formal styles is particularly suitable for embedding TTS within prerecorded prompts.
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Aculab's "international" accent is also made widely available in this version of TTS.
This has been carefully designed to give a clearer output, making it wholly acceptable and intelligible to all English speaking customers.
New state of the art intonation and duration modelling in Aculab TTS takes into account the structure of the words and phrases to be spoken and gives the appropriate emphasis, producing highly intelligible natural rhythmic speech.
Aculab TTS incorporates a sophisticated model of pitch range and variation, which ensures that the intonation is clear and meaningful.
It also adds the right amount of natural variation, avoiding the monotonous and erratic extremes of other TTS systems.
"Because Aculab's text-to-speech software can be downloaded under a cost- free licence from our website for use with our Prosody digital signal processing (DSP) resource cards, it provides developers with exceptional value for money", says Chris Gravett, sales and marketing director of Aculab.
"As Prosody is so flexible, it can be used to provide an audio channel for TTS output as well as other DSP functions like recording and conferencing".
With a system architecture designed specifically for use in telephony applications, Aculab's host based TTS is a fast and accurate concatenative speech synthesis system with a small memory footprint.
It allows developers to enhance the performance of their telephony applications by combining TTS with speech recognition and other speech processing algorithms through the generic Aculab API.
"Using TTS and Prosody, email and SMS messages can be retrieved and heard by phoning an integrated messaging service", explains Chris Gravett.
"This type of service is perfect for people on the move who need immediate access to their e-mail".
"TTS is also useful for call centres.
VeCommerce, a "Connected with Aculab" partner, has developed an interactive dialogue system - called VeCab - for New Zealand's leading taxi company, Auckland Co-op Taxis, which has 75 call centre staff handling approximately 250,000 calls per month.
Using TTS and speech recognition, the application allows customers to place bookings over the phone, without the need for an operator to enter the details into the taxi dispatch system.
This increases Auckland Co-op Taxis' ability to handle busy periods, providing higher levels of customer service whilst also reducing call handling costs".
As Chris Gravett points out, these telephony applications naturally require spoken output.
"TTS is ideal where the information to be read out is either frequently updated or too extensive to record", he adds.
Fully scalable, Aculab's TTS software uses client/server architecture, with an email pre-processor and a lexicon customisation tool.
It is available with Windows NT4.0/2000 and Linux operating systems support.
New languages available for field trial include Italian and Brazilian Portuguese.
(This was Electronicstalk's Top Story on 18 March 2002).
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