An open source speech synthesis frontend for HTS

Abstract

This paper describes a software framework for HMM-based speech synthesis that we have developed and released to the public. The framework is compatible to the well-known HTS toolkit by incorporating Hts_engine and Flite. It enables HTS voices to be used as Microsoft Windows system voices and to be integrated into Android and iOS apps. Non- English languages are supported through the capability to load Festival format pronunciation dictionaries and letter to sound rules. The release also includes an Austrian German voice model of a male, professional speaker recorded in studio quality as well as pronunciation dictionary, letter to sound rules and basic text preprocessing procedures for Austrian German. The framework is available under an MIT-style license.