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ModelTalker Speech Synthesizer
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The ModelTalker TTS system converts plain English text to speech. It uses a text to phoneme system which includes capabilities for parsing ToBI-like descriptions of the intonation. Synthesis is accomplished through a combination of database-driven speech and a variant on diphone-based phoneme to sound engines known as Biphone-Constrained Concatenation (BCC). Speech stored in the database encompasses common words and phrases in different contexts as well as a complete set of biphones. The BCC sound engine results in smoother, more natural speech, without sacrificing the ability to quickly "capture" new voices in the biphone inventories for the system. Resulting synthesized speech sounds like, or models, the speech of particular talkers with, at its best, the quality of recorded speech, or, at its worst, the quality of synthetic speech in the same "voice."

Download the ModelTalker Synthesizer and ModelTalker Voice Recorder (formerly known as InvTool)

Some examples of synthetic speech are given below. You can now also visit our interactive ModelTalker website and try a live version of the system.

Synthesized speech found entirely in speech database:

1) Good Morning.

2) What do you think about that?

Synthesized speech with both long and short stretches of speech from database:

3) I left my coffee on the table.

4) The storm is getting worse outside.

Synthesized speech composed almost entirely of diphones in database:

5) She touted the virtues of Guar Gum.

6) The obstreperous youth broke the carousel.