Jay's blog on text-to-speech (Now Defunct) https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/texttospeech/feed.xml What's up with text-to-speech (TTS) and Microsoft? Heck, what's up with TTS in general these days? Speech, language, and technology. Cool stuff, indeed. Wed, 17 Apr 2019 04:05:34 GMT en-US hourly 1 Moving away from Text to Speech... but other great folks are still here https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/texttospeech/moving-away-from-text-to-speech-but-other-great-folks-are-still-here Mon, 02 Oct 2006 18:16:00 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/texttospeech/2006/10/02/moving-away-from-text-to-speech-but-other-great-folks-are-still-here/ I'm no longer blogging on text to speech; however, there are still a lot of great people blogging on speech at Microsoft. Your best contact is going to be Chuck Opperman who has a blog related to TTS and Speech API content:

https://blogs.msdn.com/chuckop/

Also, the Speech team participates on newsgroups and on a Yahoo Speech forum if you are looking for additional insight.

Best,

Jay

 

]]> Model Talker will allow individuals to create their own custom TTS voice https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/texttospeech/model-talker-will-allow-individuals-to-create-their-own-custom-tts-voice Tue, 11 Jul 2006 22:03:00 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/texttospeech/2006/07/11/model-talker-will-allow-individuals-to-create-their-own-custom-tts-voice/ It was only a matter of time.... AgoraNet, Inc. appears to be in the process of introducing the Model Talker system of TTS, allowing an individual to create a TTS engine based on her voice to be used with any Sapi 5.0 compliant system (Windows XP/Vista). The technology is targeted towards individuals loosing their ability to speak. Very cool.

I can imagine that someday you'll check into a new company and as part of your new hire task list, you'll be ask to sit down at your desk for the first hour of each day recording a series of sentences. At the end of a few weeks, you'll upload your recordings to HR and they will run it through a tool and then send the result to your IT team. Now, when you send an email to someone in your company, they can listen to your email - with not just any TTS voice, but a TTS version of your very own voice.

]]> The Blizzard Challenge: Rate text to speech samples https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/texttospeech/the-blizzard-challenge-rate-text-to-speech-samples Fri, 30 Jun 2006 12:43:00 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/texttospeech/2006/06/30/the-blizzard-challenge-rate-text-to-speech-samples/ What's the Blizzard Challenge? In a shell's nut, it's a competition that provides researchers and speech labs with the same set of originally recorded waves (i.e., 5 hours of a male speaker), and then challenges teams to create the "best" (i.e., most natural and intelligible) TTS voice. If it were an architecture challenge, it would be like giving the same set of building materials to many different architects to come up with the most functional and beautiful building.

And now rating the results is open to the public here:

https://www.speech.cs.cmu.edu/blizzard2006/register-R.html

It took me about 20 minutes to complete the study. There are five tasks, with the first three scoring waves, and a transcription for the last two. It's probably a good indication of how good a TTS system you can get with 5 hours of recordings. I can't tell who are all of the participant groups at this point. Festvox has a little bit more information on its site.

 

]]> Vista Beta 2 Screen Reader and Text to Speech https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/texttospeech/vista-beta-2-screen-reader-and-text-to-speech Fri, 09 Jun 2006 14:22:00 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/texttospeech/2006/06/09/vista-beta-2-screen-reader-and-text-to-speech/ If you are running Vista Beta 2, check out the new text to speech functionality using the Narrator screen reader program. (Narrator is also enabled in Windows XP; however, the Vista TTS voice is way better in terms of naturalness and intelligibility IMO compared to MS Sam).

You can start Narrator in one of two ways.

1. If you have the "Run" command enabled in your start menu. then go to START > Run > and type "narrator.exe". (Egads, no, the 'run' command is not there by default. To get it there, right click on the toolbar and go to PROPERTIES > click on the START MENU tab > click on the Customize button and then find the check box for the  "Run-command on".)

2. Or, simply go to the control panel and click on "Ease of Access". There you'll find the "Narrator" button to get you started.

]]> Text to Speech in Mission Impossible 3: A Dissection https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/texttospeech/text-to-speech-in-mission-impossible-3-a-dissection Fri, 12 May 2006 16:47:00 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/texttospeech/2006/05/12/text-to-speech-in-mission-impossible-3-a-dissection/ Besides being the best of the three MI movies, there were 2 instances of TTS in the movie that deserve some discussion (and clarification). One of the scenes was simple and plausable, while the second was a definite stretch (i.e., not doable by today's technology).

In the first scene with TTS, one of the "good" guys was automating the descruction of a wharehouse full of "bad" guys, using vehicles equipped with large guns. When the automation started, the computer began speaking out some information using TTS. I'm pretty sure it was Mac OSX TTS. Definitely low on the naturalness scale, but intelligible nonetheless. (Can anyone confirm which TTS voice this was?)

In the second scene(s), THE "good" guy (i.e., Tom Cruise's character), forces THE bad guy to read several syntactically but not semantically grammatical sentences off of a business sized card at gun point. Within seconds of completing the reading of the card, another "good" guy has intercepted the wave beneath the complex to generate a highly natural and intelligible TTS voice which is sent back to our protagonist in a bathroom who then can talk with the "bad" guy's voice.  OK, so I'm actually quite forgiving in movies, giving the technology the benefit of the doubt (i.e., I pretend that I'm watching Sci-Fi and not a modern day action movie). So, if we assume that this was some other technology beyond TTS, great. No worries. However, if you are insisting that the movie follow current plausable technology, then here's what wrong with the TTS in this second scene:

1) The TTS engine was generated from several sentences. Today, takes many many hours of recordings to generate a naturally sounding engine.

2) The recording was done in a bathroom next to a loud party and then streamed to a nearby underground location. Not likely to result in the high quality recordings that one would need for TTS.

3) The recording was streamed through rock. I'm imagining that some signal loss would be encountered in real life.

4) The resulting TTS sounded almost EXACTLY (egads, as if it truly was the other actor speaking with Tom lip-synching) like the "Bad" guy!  Even on the BEST concatenative engines (i.e., based on 40+ hours of recording a person's voice), it won't sound just like the real person.

Comments? Alternative takes?

]]> Problems with French Liason in TTS - "A thread is a happy husband?" https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/texttospeech/problems-with-french-liason-in-tts-a-thread-is-a-happy-husband Thu, 23 Mar 2006 16:49:00 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/texttospeech/2006/03/23/problems-with-french-liason-in-tts-a-thread-is-a-happy-husband/ Recently I was talking to a colleague who is a native French speaker (hey, that's the great benefit of working here at Microsoft - lots of non-English speakers around) and she pointed out an interesting occurance of mispronunciation in French TTS that she found while casually taking advantage of speech technology (she knows I dig TTS). The phrase is the following:

"Un fils et un mari heureux"

 

Literally, this translates in English as "A son and a happy husband"; however, it comes out sounding like "A thread is a happy husband!"

 

Why is that? Well, the word for "son" should be pronounced as [f i s] but comes out as [f i l]. And "fil" means string or thread. Also, the "et un" string should be [eh ah] as in "and a", but comes out incorrectly as [e tah] meaning "is a." (please forgive my phonetic convention). All you linguists know that this is all due to liason.

 

TTS is cool... but only as good as its sons, threads, and husbands.

]]> Shakespeare video with text to speech https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/texttospeech/shakespeare-video-with-text-to-speech Tue, 14 Feb 2006 16:15:00 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/texttospeech/2006/02/14/shakespeare-video-with-text-to-speech/ Egads, it's quite clear that Shakespeare wasn't meant to be read with a text to speech voice... or at least not with the Micorosoft Mary and Microsoft Mike which are representative of older MS technology (old in terms of what users will get with Vista). At any rate, check out this video if you want to see TTS acting at its worst.

This video suggests that having emotive TTS might be a feature worth supporting. I know that Loquendo has such a feature with its TTS, but it appears to be limited to a few pre-recorded emotive sayings.

]]> What is TTS? How does it work? https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/texttospeech/what-is-tts-how-does-it-work Tue, 07 Feb 2006 21:21:00 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/texttospeech/2006/02/07/what-is-tts-how-does-it-work/ I recently went over the entry in Wikipedia on text-to-speech, and it turns out to be a really good overview of the technolgogy. If you are interested in its history and the various components that would have to be handled by any TTS system, I highly recommend this site. There are also a number of helpful links at the end of the article.

]]> Another blogger on TTS https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/texttospeech/another-blogger-on-tts Mon, 30 Jan 2006 14:23:00 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/texttospeech/2006/01/30/another-blogger-on-tts/ Blake's blog here and you can see some of the enthusiasm around text to speech. Blake's site, The Road to Know Where, is loaded with all sorts of tips for Windows users. I'll know where to send my mom the next time she is looking for helpful user hints. :)]]> Get El Mundo in podcast in Spanish https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/texttospeech/get-el-mundo-in-podcast-in-spanish Thu, 26 Jan 2006 22:25:00 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/texttospeech/2006/01/26/get-el-mundo-in-podcast-in-spanish/ El Mundo is one of the more well known newspapers in Spain. And they are now offering an MP3 podcast download of the daily news. It appears that the voice of Rosa is the very same Rosa of AT&T Natural Voices.

I found it interesting that the podcast actually caveats its TTSness on start-up. That is, it says, many may be surprised by my tone of voice... but to keep in mind that I'm a machine. My guess is that people are a lot less critical on a TTS voice if you tell them ahead of time that it's a computer rather than a real voice. That would be an interesting study if it hasn't already been done.

(Special thanks to Enrique Lopez Diaz for pointing out the El Mundo TTS site.)

]]>