Distributed Text-to-Speech Synthesis for Handheld Devices
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Solution Overview
Problem
Handheld portable devices face limitations in processing power and storage capacity, making high-quality text-to-speech synthesis challenging, as existing methods require significant computational resources and data transfer, and often result in low-quality or unnatural-sounding speech.
Innovation Solution
A distributed text-to-speech synthesis system where a host device converts text input into an audio index representation, selecting audio units from an inventory and sending only the index to a guest device for concatenation, allowing for natural-sounding and intelligible speech output while minimizing data transfer and dependency on external devices.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Manufacturing precision
If text-to-speech synthesis is performed completely on a host personal computer with high processing power, then speech quality is improved, but data transfer size and time increase significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The text-to-speech synthesis process is divided into two segments: (1) text analysis and audio index representation creation performed on the host PC, and (2) audio unit selection and concatenation performed on the portable media player. This segmentation allows the computationally intensive analysis to be done once on the host, while the portable device performs only the lightweight assembly operations, reducing data transfer requirements while maintaining speech quality.
Solution Approach 2:
The host personal computer performs preliminary text analysis and creates audio index representations in advance, before transferring data to the portable media player. This preliminary action ensures that when the portable device needs to generate speech, it already has pre-processed index data ready for rapid audio unit selection and concatenation, eliminating the need for repeated full text-to-speech conversions.
2Quantity of substance
If text-to-speech synthesis is performed on a handheld portable device with limited processing power, then data transfer is minimized, but speech quality deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The synthesis process is segmented so that the portable media player only performs the lightweight tasks of selecting audio units based on pre-created indices and concatenating them. This segmentation enables the portable device to operate within its limited processing capabilities while still producing high-quality speech output by leveraging the pre-processed analysis data from the host computer.
3Manufacturing precision
If complete audio files are transferred from host computer to media player, then speech quality is maintained, but storage capacity is consumed and transfer time increases
Solution Approach 1:
Instead of transferring complete audio files, the system extracts and transfers only the essential audio index representation data from the host computer to the portable media player. This extracted index data contains sufficient information for the portable device to reconstruct high-quality speech by selecting and concatenating audio units from its local inventory, dramatically reducing transfer time and storage requirements.
Solution Approach 2:
The system creates a compact copy of the audio information in the form of an audio index representation rather than copying the full audio files. This index copy contains references and parameters that enable the portable media player to reconstruct the speech audio locally, reducing transfer size while maintaining speech quality.
4Manufacturing precision
If text-to-speech conversion is performed for each new text string on the media player, then speech quality can be maintained, but processing power and time are wasted
Solution Approach 1:
The host computer performs preliminary text analysis and creates audio index representations in advance, storing them for future use. When the portable media player needs to generate speech for new or recurring text strings, it can directly utilize these pre-created indices without repeating the full text-to-speech conversion process, significantly improving processing efficiency while maintaining speech quality.
Solution Approach 2:
The system implements a feedback mechanism where the portable media player can transfer new text strings to the host computer for analysis, and the host computer updates the audio index representations accordingly. This feedback loop ensures that the portable device has access to up-to-date index data for efficient speech generation, eliminating the need for repeated full conversions of the same text strings.
Data Source
AI summary
A method and system for distributed text-to-speech synthesis and intelligibility, and more particularly to distributed text-to-speech synthesis on handheld portable computing devices that can be used for example to generate intelligible audio prompts that help a user interact with a user interface of the handheld portable computing device. The text-to-speech distributed system 70 receives a text string from the guest devices and comprises a text analyzer 72, a prosody analyzer 74, a database 14 that the text analyzer and prosody analyzer refer to, and a speech synthesizer 80. Elements of the speech synthesizer 80 are resident on the host device and the guest device and an audio index representation of the audio file associated with the text string is produced at the host device and transmitted to the guest device for producing the audio file at the guest device.