Evaluating the Quality of Synthetic Speech

Abstract

The utifity oftext-to-speech systems depends on two aspects oftheir performance: intelligibility and nateralness. Evaluation ofthese aspects of synthetic speech provides important information about the performance of a speech synthesizer in comparison to competing products. It can be important for developers to understand where the reafitve strengths and weaknesses of a particular synthesizer are so they can assist in development as weil as marketing. Diagnostic evaluation directly can assist in the development ejJort by pinpointing specijic problems in synthesis that can be redressed by engineering solutions. This chapter will outfine the prinicles that govern the design of tests to measurethe performance of a text-to-speech system. Moreover, we will discuss the factors that influence performance on these tests. Finally, we will review some performance comparison tests used for text-to speech systems.