Voice Synthesis

Paul Taylor, Rhetorical Systems Wednesday 11th December 2002, 6:30 pm Refreshments served at 6:15 pm The Royal Pharmaceutical Society, 36 York Place, Edinburgh Please note that, for security reasons, the Royal Pharmaceutical Society keep their main door locked. Please ring the buzzer to gain admittance.

Speech synthesis has come a long way from the robotic voices that we experienced in the past. Today the voice quality of speech synthesis is very high indeed, sometimes matching the naturalness of human speech.

This talk will give an overview of speech synthesis technology from the early days of mechanical speaking machines, through electronic systems and finally to the software based systems of today. Aspects of these core technologies will be explained. The talk will conclude with an overview of how speech synthesis fits in the modern, multi-media, mobile world.