Evaluation of Modules and Tools for Speech Synthesis: the ECESS Framework

The consortium ECESS1 (European Center of Excellence for Speech Synthesis) has set up a framework for evaluation of software modules and tools relevant for speech synthesis. Till now two lines of evaluation campaigns have been established: - Evaluation of the ECESS TTS modules (text processing, prosody, acoustic synthesis) - Evaluation of ECESS tools (pitch extraction, voice activity detection, phonetic segmentation). The functionality and interfaces of the ECESS TTS have been developed by a joint effort between ECESS and the EC-funded project TC-STAR2 . First evaluation campaigns were conducted within TC-STAR using the ECESS framework. As TC-STAR finished in March 2007, ECESS continued and extended the evaluation of ECESS TTS modules and tools by its own. Within the paper we describe a novel framework which allows performing remote evaluation for modules via the web. First experimental results are reported. Further the result of several evaluation campaigns for tools handling pitch e...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2008
• Where: LREC
• Authors: Harald Höge, Zdravko Kacic, Bojan Kotnik, Matej Rojc, Nicolas Moreau, Horst-Udo Hain
• Keywords: ECESS TTS, Education, Evaluation, Evaluation Campaigns, LREC 2008