A model for the synthesis of natural sounding vowels

A model has been developed which is designed to preserve some of the naturalness that is usually lost in speech synthesis. A parameterized function is used to produce an approximation to the cross‐sectional area through the glottis. A circuit model of the subglottal and glottal system is used to generate the volume velocity of the air through the glottis from the lung pressure and the time‐varying supraglottal pressure. The tract is represented by it input impedance impulse response which can be calculated from the area function of the tract. A convolution of the input impedance impulse response with the volume velocity determines the supraglottal pressure. The equations relating the above two onditions for the volume velocity are solved simultaneously. The output of the model is generated by convolving the resulting glottal volume velocity with the transfer function impulse response of the tract. A comparison is made between vowels synthesized with and without the vocal tract glottal flow interaction. Li...