Speech Synthesis Middleware: ToSpeak™

Provides far more realistic speaking voice than the current closed-loop training (CLT) technology with about the same amount of memory.

ToSpeak™ uses a new Toshiba-proprietary technology to reduce sound-quality variations. This technology selects plural speech units and fuses them together to make the synthesized voice sound more realistic and natural.
The memory-resident version of ToSpeak™ consumes only as much memory as the current CLT technology (approx. 2 MB) to implement a speech corpus.

This figure shows the comparisons of Sound Quality and Memory Requirement between the Conventional and New Speech Synthesis Technologies.

Comparisons of Sound Quality and Memory Requirement between the Conventional and New Speech Synthesis Technologies

General Specifications

Input data: Phonetic transcriptions or plain text
Output data: PCM digital audio
The sampling frequency is selectable from 22 kHz, 16 kHz, 8 kHz and so on.
Memory requirement: A few Mbytes (Ask Toshiba because it depends on the system organization.)
Supported languages: Japanese, American and British English, American Spanish, Canadian French, Mandarin Chinese, etc.
Supported processor: ARM9 (Ask Toshiba for other processors.)

Product Introduction

Two versions of the speech synthesis middleware are available according to application requirements.

This figure provides an overview of the Speech Synthesis Middleware (SYN & TTS).

Features of the SYN middleware

Takes a string of phonetic symbols as input and adds natural prosody and intonation
Eliminates the need for linguistic analysis and thus saves memory.

This figure provides an overview of the Features of the SYN middleware.

Features of the TTS Middleware

Accepts plain text as input and converts it into speech.
Supports phonetic transcriptions as input.

This figure provides an overview of the Features of the TTS Middleware.

Benefits of Using Speech Synthesis

Click this image to hear a sample voice.

Route guidance of a car navigation system

ToSpeak™ enables route guidance including a huge number of proper nouns with a natural-sounding voice. ToSpeak™ can be upgraded through simple maintenance of a phonetics database; it is unnecessary to record utterances spoken by professional narrators.

Drive assist

Draws a driver's attention with voice warnings.

Hands-free phone calls

You know who is calling without taking your eyes off the road.

Reading out the delivered information

You can make ToSpeak™ read out content delivered from information service providers.

Reading out emails

Why not add voice messages to make your emails friendlier?

* Bluetooth® is owned by Bluetooth SIG, Inc. and licensed to Toshiba Corporation.

* System and product names mentioned herein may be trademarks or registered trademarks of respective companies or organizations.