New generation of IVONA Text To Speech voices

Current state of art
Text To Speech voices are intended to read texts naturally in a human sounding way. Unfortunately, in spite of the many improvements TTS technology has made during the past few years, Text To Speech voices still have an artificial/synthetic sound, as the lack of expressiveness makes them unappealing. This makes listening to a text longer than one short sentence read aloud by a TTS voice quite difficult.
A new age for Text To Speech
In 2009 we developed a new voices production technique for IVONA Text To Speech. The aim of this technique is to achieve voice-talent-like, expressive sounding of words, sentences, paragraphs and even whole stories and books. Our goal was to be able to create Text To Speech voices that sounded exactly like the voice-talents who had lent their voices to the production of TTS, preserving their full expressiveness and all individual aspects.
New IVONA voices
We are proud to present our first two voices created using the innovation mentioned above. Both voices speak Standard
British English (Received Pronunciation accent). We called them IVONA Amy and IVONA Brian.
Below you can
listen to a few samples of utterances:
| Original voice talent recordings | |
| Voice talent Amy | Voice talent Brian |
| IVONA TTS voice recordings: | |
| IVONA Voice Amy | IVONA Voice Brian |
Voices above are built in partnership with Royal National institute of Blind People (RNiB), UK. Steve Taylor, Head of Innovation at RNiB says: "IVO Software has delivered amazing quality and innovation in an area that we are particularly keen to support. We are proud to have met the team at Ivo who have worked extremely hard and thoroughly - their focus is on quality and this shows in every element of our partnership".
Create customized voice with IVONA Text-To-Speech
Advantages of customized voice:
- Own voice matched to your own brand,
- Dedicated to your needs,
- Recognized as voice of your company.
IVONA offers a wide range of voices, but as an additional option you can order customized voices. Your voice will be created with IVONA Rapid Voice Development technique. This semi-automatic process uses artificial intelligence algorithms. AI algorithms and their ability to learn allow us to create voice-talent-like voices with computer precision. The additional advantage of RVD is that process of building a new voice is fast and semiautomatic. IVONA Text To Speech takes advantage of many other technological innovations that make it a leading system in the TTS industry. Starting 2006 IVONA maintains a leading position in the prestigious annual scientific event Blizzard Challenge (Text-To-Speech systems comparison).
Advantages of voices' creation with IVONA Rapid Voice Development
- Rapid creation (voice ready in two months),
- Voice speaks exactly like the voice-talent,
- Voice speaks with a style you exactly need,
- Creation is cost-effective.
