US Patent 8412528 Back-end database reorganization for application-specific concatenative text-to-speech systems

The present invention relates to computer-generated text-to-speech conversion. It relates in particular to a method and system for updating a Concatenative Text-To-Speech (CTTS) system with a speech database from a base version to a new version. The present invention performs an application-specific re-organization of a synthesizer's speech database by means of certain decision tree modifications. By that reorganization, certain synthesis units are made available for the new application, which are not available in prior art without a new speech session. This allows the creation of application-specific synthesizers with improved output speech quality for arbitrary domains and applications at very low cost.