Abstract: A telephone call may be received or made by the user of telephony-enabled apparatus in circumstances, such as during a meeting, where spoken responses by the user to what the other party to the call has said are unacceptable. A telephony method and arrangement are disclosed which permits a user to use silent input to the telephony-enabled apparatus in order to generate a response to the other party to the call. Response generation is facilitated by enabling the user to effect a selection from the content of the other party's input, or from options derived from that input, with this selection then being used in forming the response.

Abstract: A speech synthesiser is provided with a dialog-style selection arrangement responsive to a factor affecting intelligibility of speech output by the apparatus to select a dialog style intended to provide at least a minimum level of intelligibility of speech output by the synthesiser. The selected dialog style is used by a speech-application text provider when generating text-form utterances for a current speech application, these text-form utterances then being converted into speech form by a text-to-speech converter. The factor affecting intelligibility may be a measure of the intelligibility of the speech-form output or an environmental factor such as background noise in the user's environment.

Abstract: A speech synthesizer has a language generator for generating a text-form utterance from input semantic information and a text-to-speech converter for converting the text-from utterance into speech form. The overall quality of the speech-form utterance produced by the text-to-speech converter, is assessed and if judged inadequate, the language generator is triggered to produce a new version of the text-form utterance. The assessment of the overall quality of the speech form utterance is preferably effected by a classifier fed with feature values generated during the conversion process operated by the text-to-speech converter.

Abstract: A speech system has a speech input channel including a speech recognizer, and a speech output channel including a text-to-speech converter. Associated with the input channel is a barge-in control for setting barge-in behavior parameters determining how the apparatus handles barge-in by a user during speech output by the apparatus. In order to make the barge-in control more responsive to the actual speech output from the output channel, a barge-in prediction arrangement is provided that is responsive to feature values produced during the operation of the text-to-speech converter to produce indications as to the most likely barge-in points. The barge-in control is responsive to these indications to adjust at least one of the barge-in behavior parameters for periods corresponding to the most likely barge-in points.

Abstract: A method for inserting a watermark into an audio signal comprising substituting a noise-like signal portion with a replacement noise-like signal portion, and the replacement noise-like signal portion is modulated with watermark data. In a preferred embodiment Perceptual Noise Substitution is used to locate those portions of the audio signal which are noise-like and which may be replaced by synthetic noise modulated with watermark data. Advantageously the inventive method results in a signal having a synthetic noise signal portion which is modulated by watermark data but which is perceived merely as a noisy signal portion and not as watermark data carrying. Furthermore, watermarks incorporated by the inventive method may be adapted to be robust to various audio compression schemes.

Abstract: A speech synthesizer includes plural synthesis engines each having different characteristics and converting text-form utterances into speech form. One of the synthesis engines is selected as the current operative engine for producing speech-form utterances for a speech application. If the overall quality of the speech-form utterance produced by the text-to-speech converter of the current operative synthesis engine becomes inadequate, a different engine is selected as the current operative synthesis engine.

Abstract: An audio signal is decomposed into lower and upper sub-band and at least the noise component of the upper sub-band is encoded. At the decoder the audio signal is synthesized by a decoding means which utilizes a synthesized noise excitation signal and a filter to reproduce the noise component in the upper sub-band.

Abstract: An audio signal is decomposed into lower and upper sub-band and at least the noise component of the sub-band is encoded. At the decoder the audio signal is synthesised by a decoding means which utilises a synthesised noise excitation signal and a filter to reproduce the noise component in the upper sub-band.

Abstract: A telephone call may be received or made by the user of telephony-enabled apparatus in circumstances, such as during a meeting, where spoken responses by the user to what the other party to the call has said are unacceptable. A telephony method and arrangement are disclosed which permits a user to use silent input to the telephony-enabled apparatus in order to generate a response to the other party to the call. Response generation is facilitated by enabling the user to effect a selection from the content of the other party's input, or from options derived from that input, with this selection then being used in forming the response.

Abstract: An audio user interface is provided in which items are represented in an audio field by corresponding synthesized sound sources from where sounds related to the items appear to emanate. The nature of the audio output devices used to render the synthesised sounds is such that the user is also able to hear real-world sounds from the environment. Under user control, a distinctive presentation effect is selectively applied to the item-related sounds emanating from a group of at least one synthesised sound source whereby to assist the user in distinguishing these sounds from the real-world sounds.

Abstract: A speech input stream is fed to a first speech recogniser. A confidence measure is formed for each recognition hypothesis produced in output by the first speech recogniser and this confidence measure is compared against an acceptability threshold. Where the confidence measure of a recognition hypothesis is below the threshold, the corresponding portion of the speech input is passed to a second speech recogniser and the recognition hypothesis produced is used instead of, or as a supplement to, that output by the first speech recogniser. In a preferred embodiment, the first speech recogniser is a recogniser trained to a particular user whilst the second recogniser is one associated with a particular speech application currently being accessed by the user.

Abstract: A method for inserting a watermark into an audio signal comprising substituting a noise-like signal portion with a replacement noise-like signal portion, and the replacement noise-like signal portion is modulated with watermark data. In a preferred embodiment Perceptual Noise Substitution is used to locate those portions of the audio signal which are noise-like and which may be replaced by synthetic noise modulated with watermark data.

Abstract: A speech synthesiser is provided with a dialog-style selection arrangement responsive to a factor affecting intelligibility of speech output by the apparatus to select a dialog style intended to provide at least a minimum level of intelligibility of speech output by the synthesiser. The selected dialog style is used by a speech-application text provider when generating text-form utterances for a current speech application, these text-form utterances then being converted into speech form by a text-to-speech converter. The factor affecting intelligibility may be a measure of the intelligibility of the speech-form output or an environmental factor such as background noise in the user's environment.

Abstract: A speech system has a speech input channel including a speech recognizer, and a speech output channel including a text-to-speech converter. Associated with the input channel is a barge-in control for setting barge-in behavior parameters determining how the apparatus handles barge-in by a user during speech output by the apparatus. In order to make the barge-in control more responsive to the actual speech output from the output channel, a barge-in prediction arrangement is provided that is responsive to feature values produced during the operation of the text-to-speech converter to produce indications as to the most likely barge-in points. The barge-in control is responsive to these indications to adjust at least one of the barge-in behavior parameters for periods corresponding to the most likely barge-in points.

Abstract: A speech synthesiser is provided with a plurality of synthesis engines each having different characteristics and each including a text-to-speech converter for converting text-form utterances into speech form. A synthesis-engine selector selects one of the synthesis engines as the current operative engine for producing speech-form utterances for a speech application. If the overall quality of the speech-form utterance produced by the text-to-speech converter of the current operative synthesis engine becomes inadequate, the selector is caused to select a different engine as the current operative synthesis engine.

Abstract: A speech synthesizer has a language generator for generating a text-form utterance from input semantic information and a text-to-speech converter for converting the text-from utterance into speech form. The overall quality of the speech-form utterance produced by the text-to-speech converter, is assessed and if judged inadequate, the language generator is triggered to produce a new version of the text-form utterance. The assessment of the overall quality of the speech form utterance is preferably effected by a classifier fed with feature values generated during the conversion process operated by the text-to-speech converter.

Abstract: An audio user interface is provided in which items are represented in an audio field by corresponding synthesized sound sources from where sounds related to the items appear to emanate. The nature of the audio output devices used to render the synthesized sounds is such that the user is also able to hear real-world sounds from the environment. Under user control, a distinctive presentation effect is selectively applied to the item-related sounds emanating from a group of at least one synthesized sound source whereby to assist the user in distinguishing these sounds from the real-world sounds.

Abstract: An interactive audio system comprises an audio source terminal 11 and a audio playback terminal 13 connected to each another by a wireless data link 14. The playback terminal 13, in this case, is in the form of a mobile telephone receiver. The source terminal 1 comprises a source computer 5 provided at some fixed network core. Connected to the playback terminal 13 is an audio transducer 15, and a user control device 17. The wireless data link 14 is established over a network connection which is set-up using an existing cellular telecommunications network (as are used in mobile telephony systems). In use, the source terminal 11 acts as a device by which the playback terminal 13 can access particular services. The presentation of available services is not performed using visual data displayed at the remote terminal, but instead, audible sound is used to present services. The services are represented by audio components which are transmitted from the audio source terminal 11 over the data link 14.

Abstract: The present invention relates to the management of voice data.Voice messages left on a recipient's answerphone or delivered via a voicemail system are a popular form of person-to-person communication. Such voice messages are quick to generate for the sender but are relatively difficult to review for the recipient; speech is slow to listen to and, unlike inherently visual forms of messages such as electronic mail or handwritten notes, cannot be quickly scanned for the relevant information. The present invention aims to make it easier for users to find relevant information in voice messages, and other kinds of voice record, such as recordings of meetings and recorded dictation.According to the present invention we provide a method of speech segmentation comprising processing speech data so as to detect putative pauses and characterised by forming speech block boundaries at a selected subset of the pauses, said selection being based on a preselected target speech block length.