Copy Synthesis
Copy synthesis allows the creation of stimuli whose characteristics can be precisely controlled and thus permits experiments which measure the perceptual consequences of altering acoustic cues independently of others. However, obtaining the time-varying parameter values for a formant synthesiser is very laborious, and much care is needed to ensure accurate formant frequencies, amplitudes and bandwidths before a copy-synthesised stimulus will sound like its original. To facilitate this analysis and refinement process, I wrote KPE, a graphical interface to the Klatt(1988) synthesiser. It allows users to analyse the original token, to manipulate the time-varying formant synthesiser parameters, and to subjectively and objectively compare the original and copy-synthesised stimuli. KPE88 uses the Sensimetrics implementation of the Klatt(1988) synthesiser, and so is proprietary. However, KPE80 is a version of KPE for a public domain version of the Klatt (1980) synthesiser.
Example KPE88 copy synthesised stimuliKPE88 has been used extensively to generate stimuli for the Speech Pattern Audiometer developed within the Department. It should be possible to use these parameter files with the Sensimetrics synthesiser provided that the settings included in the comments in the first lines of each parameter file are used as command line arguments to the synthesiser.
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