Patent ID: 11869529
Assignee: NIPPON TELEGRAPH AND TELEPHONE CORPORATION
Field: Computer technology (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC G | IPC G

Claim 13:
14. A speech rhythm conversion method, the method comprising:
storing, by a model store, a speech rhythm conversion model which is a neural network that receives, as an input thereto, a first feature value vector including the first data associated with a speech rhythm of at least a phoneme extracted from a first speech signal resulting from a speech uttered by a speaker in a first group;
converting, by the model store, the speech rhythm of the first speech signal to a speech rhythm of a speaker in a second group;
providing, by the model store, the speech rhythm of the speaker in the second group;
extracting, by a feature value extractor, from an input speech signal resulting from the speech uttered by the speaker in the first group, second data associated with a vocal tract spectrum and the first data associated with the speech rhythm;
receiving, by a convertor, the first feature value vector including the the speech rhythm extracted from the input speech signal to the speech rhythm conversion model;
obtaining, by the convertor, the post-conversion speech rhythm; and
generating, by a speech synthesizer, an output speech signal using the post-conversion speech rhythm and the second data associated with the vocal tract spectrum extracted from the input speech signal.