Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!uupsi!sunic!sics.se!sics!bjornl
From: bjornl@sics.se (Bj|rn Lisper)
Newsgroups: comp.music
Subject: Re: voice synthesizer
Message-ID: <1991Apr17.151735.5080@sics.se>
Date: 17 Apr 91 15:17:35 GMT
References: <71181@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU>
Sender: news@sics.se
Organization: Swedish Institute of Computer Science, Kista
Lines: 21
In-Reply-To: v092pxca@ubvmsb.cc.buffalo.edu's message of 16 Apr 91 16: 46:08 GMT

In article <71181@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU> v092pxca@ubvmsb.cc.buffalo.edu
(Paul D Fly) writes:
>Does anyone know if anyone is working on building a voice synthesizer?  This
>seems like one of the last frontiers completely open. ...

A "singing voice" synthesizer has been built as a research project at the
Dept. of Music Acoustics (Institutionen for musikakustik) at the Royal
Institute of Technology in Stockholm. Some years ago I heard a striking
demonstration of it: starting from a sine wave, characeristics of a human
voice were successively added until it suddenly sounded like a heroic opera
tenor! Rumour has it that they once sent a tape of synthesized song to the
entrance test of a school of music, and it passed...

This synthesizer was not capable of forming words, though, just to sing with
a certain wovel (which could be changed by changing the voice
characteristics). The department in question has, however, over the years
conducted some quite interesting research on speech synthesis too. I have no
references at hand, but I expect their work to be well documented at
conferences and such.

Bjorn Lisper