THE EXPRESS REAL TIME FORMANT SYNTHESISER

Abstract

A series/parallel hybrid formant synthesiser is described that is capable of real time synthesis. The system is based upon an IBM Personal Computer AT with attached PIE coprocessor and is employed as the synthesis vehicle in the IBM UKSC EXPRESS text-to-speech system. The synthesiser may be readily configured in a variety of different modes of operation: cascade alone, parallel alone, cascade/parallel, with or without voicing filters, spectral shaping filters and lip radiation filters. This paper will review the synthesiser design criteria and describe the extensive synthesis and analysis facilities available in the current implementation.