Speech Rhythm-Based Speaker Embeddings Extraction from Phonemes and Phoneme Duration for Multi-Speaker Speech Synthesis

Kenichi FUJITA; Atsushi ANDO; Yusuke IJIMA

doi:10.1587/transinf.2023EDP7039

Speech Rhythm-Based Speaker Embeddings Extraction from Phonemes and Phoneme Duration for Multi-Speaker Speech Synthesis

Kenichi FUJITA, Atsushi ANDO, Yusuke IJIMA

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This paper proposes a speech rhythm-based method for speaker embeddings to model phoneme duration using a few utterances by the target speaker. Speech rhythm is one of the essential factors among speaker characteristics, along with acoustic features such as F0, for reproducing individual utterances in speech synthesis. A novel feature of the proposed method is the rhythm-based embeddings extracted from phonemes and their durations, which are known to be related to speaking rhythm. They are extracted with a speaker identification model similar to the conventional spectral feature-based one. We conducted three experiments, speaker embeddings generation, speech synthesis with generated embeddings, and embedding space analysis, to evaluate the performance. The proposed method demonstrated a moderate speaker identification performance (15.2% EER), even with only phonemes and their duration information. The objective and subjective evaluation results demonstrated that the proposed method can synthesize speech with speech rhythm closer to the target speaker than the conventional method. We also visualized the embeddings to evaluate the relationship between the distance of the embeddings and the perceptual similarity. The visualization of the embedding space and the relation analysis between the closeness indicated that the distribution of embeddings reflects the subjective and objective similarity.

Publication: IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Information Vol.E107-D No.1 pp.93-104

Publication Date: 2024/01/01

Publicized: 2023/10/06

Online ISSN: 1745-1361

DOI: 10.1587/transinf.2023EDP7039

Type of Manuscript: PAPER

Category: Speech and Hearing

Authors

Kenichi FUJITA
  NTT Corporation
Atsushi ANDO
  NTT Corporation
Yusuke IJIMA
  NTT Corporation

Keyword

speaker embedding, phoneme duration, speech synthesis, speech rhythm

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Kenichi FUJITA, Atsushi ANDO, Yusuke IJIMA, "Speech Rhythm-Based Speaker Embeddings Extraction from Phonemes and Phoneme Duration for Multi-Speaker Speech Synthesis" in IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Information, vol. E107-D, no. 1, pp. 93-104, January 2024, doi: 10.1587/transinf.2023EDP7039.
Abstract: This paper proposes a speech rhythm-based method for speaker embeddings to model phoneme duration using a few utterances by the target speaker. Speech rhythm is one of the essential factors among speaker characteristics, along with acoustic features such as F0, for reproducing individual utterances in speech synthesis. A novel feature of the proposed method is the rhythm-based embeddings extracted from phonemes and their durations, which are known to be related to speaking rhythm. They are extracted with a speaker identification model similar to the conventional spectral feature-based one. We conducted three experiments, speaker embeddings generation, speech synthesis with generated embeddings, and embedding space analysis, to evaluate the performance. The proposed method demonstrated a moderate speaker identification performance (15.2% EER), even with only phonemes and their duration information. The objective and subjective evaluation results demonstrated that the proposed method can synthesize speech with speech rhythm closer to the target speaker than the conventional method. We also visualized the embeddings to evaluate the relationship between the distance of the embeddings and the perceptual similarity. The visualization of the embedding space and the relation analysis between the closeness indicated that the distribution of embeddings reflects the subjective and objective similarity.
URL: https://global.ieice.org/en_transactions/information/10.1587/transinf.2023EDP7039/_p

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@ARTICLE{e107-d_1_93,
author={Kenichi FUJITA, Atsushi ANDO, Yusuke IJIMA, },
journal={IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Information},
title={Speech Rhythm-Based Speaker Embeddings Extraction from Phonemes and Phoneme Duration for Multi-Speaker Speech Synthesis},
year={2024},
volume={E107-D},
number={1},
pages={93-104},
abstract={This paper proposes a speech rhythm-based method for speaker embeddings to model phoneme duration using a few utterances by the target speaker. Speech rhythm is one of the essential factors among speaker characteristics, along with acoustic features such as F0, for reproducing individual utterances in speech synthesis. A novel feature of the proposed method is the rhythm-based embeddings extracted from phonemes and their durations, which are known to be related to speaking rhythm. They are extracted with a speaker identification model similar to the conventional spectral feature-based one. We conducted three experiments, speaker embeddings generation, speech synthesis with generated embeddings, and embedding space analysis, to evaluate the performance. The proposed method demonstrated a moderate speaker identification performance (15.2% EER), even with only phonemes and their duration information. The objective and subjective evaluation results demonstrated that the proposed method can synthesize speech with speech rhythm closer to the target speaker than the conventional method. We also visualized the embeddings to evaluate the relationship between the distance of the embeddings and the perceptual similarity. The visualization of the embedding space and the relation analysis between the closeness indicated that the distribution of embeddings reflects the subjective and objective similarity.},
keywords={},
doi={10.1587/transinf.2023EDP7039},
ISSN={1745-1361},
month={January},}

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TY - JOUR
TI - Speech Rhythm-Based Speaker Embeddings Extraction from Phonemes and Phoneme Duration for Multi-Speaker Speech Synthesis
T2 - IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Information
SP - 93
EP - 104
AU - Kenichi FUJITA
AU - Atsushi ANDO
AU - Yusuke IJIMA
PY - 2024
DO - 10.1587/transinf.2023EDP7039
JO - IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Information
SN - 1745-1361
VL - E107-D
IS - 1
JA - IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Information
Y1 - January 2024
AB - This paper proposes a speech rhythm-based method for speaker embeddings to model phoneme duration using a few utterances by the target speaker. Speech rhythm is one of the essential factors among speaker characteristics, along with acoustic features such as F0, for reproducing individual utterances in speech synthesis. A novel feature of the proposed method is the rhythm-based embeddings extracted from phonemes and their durations, which are known to be related to speaking rhythm. They are extracted with a speaker identification model similar to the conventional spectral feature-based one. We conducted three experiments, speaker embeddings generation, speech synthesis with generated embeddings, and embedding space analysis, to evaluate the performance. The proposed method demonstrated a moderate speaker identification performance (15.2% EER), even with only phonemes and their duration information. The objective and subjective evaluation results demonstrated that the proposed method can synthesize speech with speech rhythm closer to the target speaker than the conventional method. We also visualized the embeddings to evaluate the relationship between the distance of the embeddings and the perceptual similarity. The visualization of the embedding space and the relation analysis between the closeness indicated that the distribution of embeddings reflects the subjective and objective similarity.
ER -