We hope that every people can enjoy the convenient functions of digital broadcasting such as an Electronic Program Guide (EPG). In 2007, Mitsubishi Electric launched the massproduced LCD television equipped with the EPG voice read-out system to Japanese domestic market. This paper describes the development of the voice read out function of a digital television receiver, background of development, the introduced speech synthesis system and the improvement degrees of every model based on end-user's opinions are summarized respectively.

In this paper, we propose the Noise Suppresser (AMR-NS) for the 3GPP standard speech codec AMR (Adaptive Multi-Rate). The proposed AMR-NS method is based on Spectral Subtraction and is structured from spectral amplitude suppression and spectral subtraction that are adaptively controlled by the input signal. The subjective evaluation results based on 3GPP performance requirements [l] in the third party testing laboratory show that the proposed AMR-NS has satisfied all the requirements for Japanese and English speech materials. It has also satisfied all the objective evaluation requirements.

SUMMARYThis paper discusses a noise suppressor for use in the standard AMR (adaptive multi-rate) voice codec in 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project). The performance standards (TS 26.077) for 3GPP noise suppressors require both high quality and high noise suppression performance with limited computational complexity. This paper is based on the spectral subtraction method, and discusses the configuration in which spectral subtraction and amplitude suppression are mutually controlled according to the state of the input signal. The improved estimation of the subband S/N (signal-to-noise ratio) for use in the control of spectral subtraction and amplitude suppression is also discussed. The proposed method is evaluated through simulation experiments, and its effectiveness is verified. Subjective evaluation tests (evaluation by third parties) and objective evaluation tests were performed in accordance with 3GPP TS 26.077, and all 3GPP performance requirement standards were met. The system obtained the first performance endorsement from 3GPP in March 2002.

We propose a new speech intelligibility improvement method for bandlimited synthesized speech, which is based on superposing high-frequency component on lower frequency signal (i.e., baseband signal), where the high-frequency component is compressed in the frequency direction to be fitted on the superposing zone of the baseband signal. We applied the proposed method to Text to speech and conducted a subjective evaluation of synthesized speech. According to the result, the synthesized speech by the proposed method is preferred to that by a simple high frequency emphasis of baseband.

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