ROYAL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY (RIT)
(KUNGL TEKNISKA HÖGSKOLAN)
Dept. of Speech Communication and Music Acoustics
S-100 44 Stockholm, Sweden
(Int 46) 8-787 70 00
ABBREVIATIONS:
RIT - Royal Institute of Technology
KTH - Kungl Tekniska Högskolan
STL - Speech Transmission Laboratory
QPSR - Quarterly Progress and Status Report
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CONTENTS
HISTORY
ANALYSIS OF SPEECH (19 - )
OVE-I FORMANT SYNTHESIS (19 - )
OVE-II FORMANT SYNTHESIS (19 - )
OVE-III FORMANT SYNTHESIS (19 - )
COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT OF INFOVOX SA-101 (19 - )
ARTICULATORY SYNTHESIS (19 - )
BIOGRAPHIES
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HISTORY
1979 Carlson, Rolf, and Bjorn Granstrom, "Some notes about Gunnar,
OVE, and speech synthesis," Speech Trans. Lab., QPSR 2, RIT,
Stockholm, 16-21 (1979). Photocopy. Photos of G. Fant, J.
Martony, OVE I and OVE II. (See SSSHP SWEDEN RIT file.)
1989 Fant, G., Karoly Galyas and Sheri Hunnicutt, "Voice output
communication aids," photocopy of draft for publication by
Swedish Handicap Institute in 1989. History of aids. Photo of
later model OVE I.
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PROJECT: ANALYSIS OF SPEECH (19 - 19 )
1956 Fant, C.G.M., "On the predictability of formant levels and
spectrum envelopes from formant frequencies", FOR ROMAN
JAKOBSON, ed. by Morris Halle et. al., Mouton & Co., The
Hague, 109-120 (1956) (B,I,K)
1963 Lindblom, B., "Spectrographic study of vowel reduction", J.
Acoust. Soc. Amer., 35, 1773-81 (1963). Formant target
undershoot for short segments. (I,K)
1966 Ohman, S.E.G., "Coarticulation in VCV utterances:
Spectrographic measurements", J. Acoust. Soc. Amer., 39,
151-168 (1966). Vowel-vowel coarticulation across an
intervening consonant. (I,K)
1967 Ohman, S.E.G., "Word and sentence intonation: a quantitative
model," STL QPSR 2-3, RIT, Stockholm, 20-54 (1967).
Intonation contours in terms of impulse and step commands
into a linear smoothing filter. (K)
1973 Fant, G., "Stops in CV syllables," in SPEECH SOUNDS AND
FEATURES, ed by G. Fant, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 110-139
(1973). Locus theory was an oversimplification. (K)
1975 Fant, G., "Non-uniform vowel normalization," Speech Trans.
Lab. QPSR 2.3, RIT Stockholm, 1-19 (1975). Nonlinear scaling
for female voices. (K)
1982 Fant, G., "Preliminaries to analysis of the human voice
source," Speech Transm. Lab. OPSR 4, RIT Stockholm, 1-25
(1982). Model of voicing source. (K)
1982 Fant, G., and T.V. Ananthapadmanabha, "Truncation and
superposition," Speech Trans. Lab. QPSR 2.3, RIT, 1-17
(1982). Glottis termination affects formant frequencies and
bandwidth. (K)
Static vocal tract analogue synthesizer. View of speech as
excitation of a linear filter by one or more sound sources.
1960 Fant, C.G.M., ACOUSTIC THEORY OF SPEECH PRODUCTION, Mouton,
The Hague (1960). (I,K)
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PROJECT: OVE-I FORMANT SYNTHESIS (19 - 19 )
Orator Verbis Electris-I (OVE-I). Cascade formant synthesizer
manually controlled from X-Y function generator. Voicing
amplitude and F0 controlled by hand-held potentiometers. First
demonstrated at London conference in 1952.
1952/54? Gunnar Fant narration and demonstration of a "POVO" (Pole
Voice Operator) synthesizer, a 4-pole early version of OVE-I.
Abrupt onset and decay of sound at this stage of development.
Tape to speech group at MIT RLE.
SSSHP 91.4 Tape: "MIT - DEMO TAPE 1, 10/90"
(8 min: Narration; syn, English vowels; syn, Swedish
vowels and diphthongs; syn: "How are you? I am well,
How are you? How ..., yeah.; interview in Swedish
between human and machine as famous tennis player:
" ... aju."; syn, Swedish words with intonation
variation; human: "... Goodbye, everybody.")
7" reel, 7.5 ips, good quality
1953 Fant, G., "Speech Communication Research", Ing. Vetenskaps
Akad. 24, Stockholm Sweden, 331-337 (1953). (K)
SSSHP 90.7 Tape: "MIT - MACHINES THAT TALK, Spring 1960"
(syn, Swedish vowels; 9 phrases: "How are you? Hello,
I am well... I love you...Yeah, I love you, OVE.; var
syn settings: "Aju")
7" reel, 7.5 ips, good quality, copy of MIT 7-36
**** use for master ****
SSSHP 32.4 Tape: Demo to accompany "Review of Text-to-speech
conversion for English," D.H. Klatt, JASA 82.3, Sept.
1987.
(2 sen: "How are you? I love you.")
Cassette, Klatt MIT A/D and D/A
1956 Summer meetings at MIT, Cambridge, included demonstrations of
Fant's OVE-I and Lawrence's PAT hardware synthesizers, in a
dialog.
SSSHP 83.8 Tape: "Some Reminiscences on Speech Research",
F.S. Cooper, demo with IEEE Trans. A&E, AU-21.3, 6/73.
(OVE: "How are you?"; PAT: "What did you say before
that?"; OVE: "I love you."; PAT: "What did you say
before that?"; OVE: "How are you?"; PAT, normal and
whispered: "What did you say before that?"; OVE: "I
love you."; PAT, singing: "What did you say before
that?")
Cassette from plastic record, stylus noise
1958 Truby, H.M.,"MEET THE EXPERT". BBC broadcast of interview
of H.M. Truby about speech phonetics and machine language
translation at the Royal Institute of Technology. The
fricative sound /s/ had been added to OVE-I.
SSSHP 92.1a: "MIT - DEMO TAPE 2, 10/90"
(human, 10:22 min: Introduction, ... use any profitable
and available means..".; gap and noise at 3:40 min; "...
these are the vowel sounds"; OVE-I female English vowels
and diphthongs, "We, you, are.")
(OVE-I syn, male: "Hello. Hello, how are you? O.K. Are
you well? Yes. Say, I love you. Oh? Yes, I love you.
I love you. Oh yeah? Yeah. Ooooo. I love you!"; syn,
song, I Love You Truly: "... truly, dear.")
7" reel, 7.5 ips, two damaged sections, copy of MIT 7-40
SSSHP 106: "MEET THE EXPERT, 30 Jan 58, Dr. H.M. Truby"
Second copy donated by H.M. Truby, 4/22/92. 5" reel,
1 7/8 ips. Tape has water damage and physical distortion.
Needs professional restoration. May be a better copy than
damaged SSSHP 92.1.
SSSHP 165: Copy of SSSHP 106, 5" reel, 3-3/4 ips.
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PROJECT: OVE-II FORMANT SYNTHESIS (19 - 19 )
OVE-II (Orator Verbis Electris-II). First full-scale experimental
series resonance (cascade formant) synthesizer with conductive ink
function generator control.
1958 Fant, C.G.M., "Modern instruments and methods for acoustic
studies of speech", PICL 8.282-358. (I) General discussion
of speech synthesis.
1958 Truby, H.M.,"MEET THE EXPERT". BBC broadcast of interview
of Dr. H.M. Truby about speech phonetics and machine language
translation at the Royal Institute of Technology. Synthetic
copy of Dr. Truby's voice.
SSSHP 92.1b Tape: "MIT - DEMO TAPE 2, 10/90"
(human and syn: "Hello, OVE, how are you? What shall I
say to that?")
7" reel, 7.5 ips, two damaged sections, copy of MIT 7-40
See SSSHP 106 and 165 above.
1959 Fant, G., "Acoustic analysis and synthesis of speech with
applications to Swedish," Ericsson Technics 1 (1959). (K)
1959 Fant, G., "The acoustics of speech", Proc. Third Intern.
Congr. Acoust., 188-201 (1959) (B)
SSSHP 90.8 Tape: "MIT - MACHINES THAT TALK, Spring 1960"
(G. Fant and syn: "Hello, how are you? What shall I
say?"; H.M. Truby and syn: "Hello, OVE, how are you?
What shall I say to that?; syn, Swedish phrase, male
and female; syn, English, Swedish, German, Russian,
French: "Yes, no. Goodbye.")
7" reel, 7.5 ips, good quality, copy of MIT 7-36
**** use for master ****
Close imitation of natural speech utterances on a formant
synthesizer.
1961 Holmes, J.N., "Research on speech synthesis carried out
during a visit to the Royal Institute of Technology,
Stockholm, from November, 1960 to March, 1961", Report JU
11-4, Joint Speech Research Unit, British Post Office,
Eastcote, England. (I,K) See also: STR QPR April 15, 1961,
p 10 and SSSHP UK JSRU file.
SSSHP 77.3 Tape: "JSRU DEMO SYNTHESIS 1965"
(human: "I enjoy the simple life.")
(male syn: "I enjoy the simple life.")
(human: "I enjoy the simple life.")
(human: "He knows just what he wants.")
(fem syn: "He knows just what he wants.")
5" reel, good quality, copy of Klatt MIT copy
**** use for master ****
SSSHP 32.7 Tape: Demo to accompany "Review of Text-to-speech
conversion for English," D.H. Klatt, JASA 82.3, Sept.
1987.
(male syn and human: "I enjoy the simple life.")
(fem syn and human: "He knows just what he wants.")
Cassette, Klatt MIT A/D and D/A copy of SSSHP77.3
SSSHP 83.12 Tape: "Some Reminiscences on Speech Research",
F.S. Cooper, demo with IEEE Trans. A&E, AU-21.3, 6/73.
(syn and human: "I enjoy the simple life.")
Cassette from plastic record, stylus noise
1962 Fant, G., and J. Martony, "Speech Synthesis", Speech
Transmission Laboratory QPSR 2, RIT, Stockholm Sweden, 18-24
(1962). (K)
SSSHP 125.10 "SCS - 1962/Stockholm Vocoder Demo Tape Sept.
1962".
("Welcome to the Stockholm Speech Comm. Seminar", CVs,
... Hello, is Docent Fant there ... 23 65 20.")
(Maxey Tape T62.1)
SSSHP 32.6 Tape: Demo to accompany "Review of Text-to-speech
conversion for English," D.H. Klatt, JASA 82.3, Sept.
1987.
("Welcome to the Stockholm Speech Comm. Seminar")
Cassette, Klatt MIT A/D and D/A
1963 Fant, C.G.M, J. Martony, U. Rengman, and A. Risberg, "OVE II
synthesis strategy", Proc Speech Comm. Seminar, paper F5.
Speech Tech. Lab., Royal Inst. of Tech, Stockholm (1963).
(I)
Tape ?
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PROJECT: OVE III FORMANT SPEECH SYNTHESIS (19 - 19 )
1968 Liljencrants, J.C.W.A., "The OVE III speech synthesizer",
IEEE Trans. Audio and Electro., 16, 137-140 (1968). (I)
SSSHP 81.6b Tape: "SPEECH ANALYSIS/SYNTHESIS DEMONSTRATION,
COPY NO. 2-9, T67.2"
(spectrum matching of 9 male sentences from tape SSSHP
80.4: "Did you extinguish the fire? ... We gave you
three books.")
7" reel, high quality, IBM's copy No. 2-9
**** use for master ****
1969 Liljencrants, J., "Speech synthesizer control by smoothed
step functions," STL OPSR-4, RIT, Stockholm, 43-50 (1969).
Critically-damped 2nd order smoothing filters for formant
transitions, variable time constants. (K)
Tape ?
1972 Carlson, R., B. Granstrom, and S. Pauli, "Perceptive
evaluation of segmental cues", STL QPSR 1/1972, RIT,
Stockholm, 18-24 (1972). Using natural and synthetic
speech. (K)
Tape ?
1975 Carlson, R. and B. Granstrom, "A phonetically oriented
programming language for rule description of speech", in
SPEECH COMMUNICATION, G. Fant ed., Almqvist and Wiksell,
Upsala Sweden, Vol. 2, 245-253 (1975). First rule compiler.
(K)
1976 Extract from a textbook, synthesized on the OVE-III, firstly
by rule, and then by art. Synthesis by J.H. Gaitenby and rule
tables by G.M. Kuhn, of Haskins Laboratories. (Personal
communication from P.W. Nye to H.D. Maxey 8/1/89, see SSSHP
USA Haskins Lab. file)
SSSHP 66.23 Tape: "Smithsonian Speech Synthesis Project,
#808, Haskins Laboratories, Dr. Patrick W. Nye"
(syn, 2 var, 1:24 min: "Perception. The first step in
the study of perception is to describe our immediate
experience of the physical world in which we live.
... context in which they occur.")
7" reel, good quality
1980 Hunnicutt, Sheri, "Grapheme-to-phoneme rules: A review,"
STL QPSR 2-3, RIT, Stockholm, 37-60 (1980). Rules for English
for the speech synthesis system at RIT (KTH).
1985 Fant, G., Q.G. Lin, and C. Gobl, "Notes on glottal flow
interaction," Speech Trans. Lab. QPSR 2-3, RIT, Stockholm,
21-45 (1985). Mathematical model of glottal waveform. (K)
Tape ?
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PROJECT: COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT OF INFOVOX SA-101 (19 - 19 )
1975 Rothenberg, M., R. Carlson, B. Granstrom, and J. Gauffin, "A
three-parameter voice source for speech synthesis," in
SPEECH COMMUNICATION, ed by G. Fant, Almqvist and Wiksell,
Uppsala Sweden, Vol. 2, 235-243 (1975). Used in Infovox
SA-101. (K)
Tape ?
1976 Carlson, R. and B. Granstrom, "A text-to-speech system based
entirely on rules," Proc. ICASSP-76, 686-688 (1976). Multi-
language system. (K)
Tape ?
1976 Carlson, R., B. Granstrom, and K. Larssen, "Evaluation of a
text-to-speech system as a reading machine for the blind,"
STL QPSR 2-3, RIT, Stockholm, 9-13 (1976). FM overnight
broadcast of the day's newspaper to PC's, Infovox SA-101
browsing. (K)
Tape ?
1982 Carlson, R., B. Granstrom, and S. Hunnicutt, "A
multi-language text-to-speech module," Proc. ICASSP-82,
1604-1607 (1982). (K) Swedish, Norwegian, Am. Engl., Br.
Engl., Spanish, French, German, Italian.
SSSHP 93.11 Tape: "MIT - DEMO TAPE 3, 10/90". Am. Engl.
(syn, 2:53 min: "This is a demonstration of speech
synthesis presented with the aid of synthesis device,
the SA101. It is produced by Infovox, a company that
... set with a command.")
7" reel, 7.5 ips, copy of Klatt MIT tape
SSSHP 32.31 Tape: Demo to accompany "Review of Text-to-speech
conversion for English," D.H. Klatt, JASA 82.3, Sept.
1987.
(4 sen: "The SA101 built ... in many applications.")
Cassette, Klatt MIT A/D and D/A of SSSHP 93.11
*** need complete diskette including other languages ***
1982 Carlson, R., B. Granstrom, and S. Hunnicutt, "Bliss
communication with speech or text output," Proc. ICASSP-82,
747-750 (1982). (K)
Tape ?
1984 Magnusson, L., M. Blomberg, R. Carlson, K. Elenius, and B.
Granstrom, "Swedish speech researchers team up with
electronic venture capitalists," Speech Technology 2 (2),
15-24 (1984). (K)
Tape ?
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PROJECT: ARTICULATORY SYNTHESIS (19 -19 )
1985 Liljencrants, J., SPEECH SYNTHESIS WITH A REFLECTION-TYPE
LINE ANALOG, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Dept Speech Comm. and
Musical Acoust., RIT, Stockholm. (K)
Tape ?
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BIOGRAPHIES
MATS BLOMBERG
ROLF CARLSON
1969 M.S., KTH, Stockholm
Research Staff Member, Dept. of Speech, Music and Hearing
1977 Ph.D., Dept. of Speech Comm. and Music Acoustics, KTH
1978-79 Natural Language Processing Group, Research Laboratory
of Electronics, MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA
1981 Docent, KTH
1989 Högskolelektor, KTH
1990-91 Spoken Language Systems Group, Lab. of Computer Science,
MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA
1995 Professor in Speech Technology, KTH
KJELL ELENIUS
C. GUNNAR M. FANT
1945 L. M. Ericsson Corp (acoustical studies of Swedish), Dept.
of Telegraphy and Telephone, RIT (KTH)
1950 Research Assoc., Acoustics Lab. and Physics, MIT
1951 Head, Speech Transmission Lab., RIT (KTH)
1958 Sc.D. in Elect. Eng., RIT (KTH)
J. GAUFFIN
C. GOBL
BJORN GRANSTROM
M. SHARON (SHERI) HUNNICUTT (see SSSHP USA MIT page)
K. LARSSEN
JOHAN C. W. A. LILJENCRANTS
1960 Civilingenjörsexamen at KTH
1960 KTH, Speech Transmission Laboratory, now Dept. of
Speech, music and hearing
1968 Tekn Licentiatexamen at KTH
1970-80 AB Fonema, 1/4 time, management and fabrication
1985 Tekn Doktorsexamen at KTH
1987 Appointed as oavlönad docent i Talöverföring.
1987 Appointed as adjoint lecturer in Speech Communication and
Electroacoustics
1996 Appointed as 'biträdande professor' at KTH.
Q. G. LIN
B. LINDBOLM
LARS MAGNUSSON, Managing Director, Infovox
J. MARTONY
S. E. G. OHMAN
S. PAULI
U. RENGMAN
A. RISBERG
M. ROTHENBERG
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