Expressive text-to-speech system and method

[0027]Embodiments relate to a method and system for text-to-speech synthesis, and in particular to a system which enables expressive speech to be synthesised from input text. The system enables the style of the output expressive speech to be controlled, as well as other speech characteristics such as speaking rate and pitch. Thus, embodiments provide a controllable and customisable system for generating expressive synthetic speech from text.

[0028]In an embodiment a system for synthesising expressive speech, includes an interface for receiving an input text for conversion to speech; and at least one processor to generate, using an expressivity characterisation module, a plurality of expression vectors, where each expression vector is a representation of prosodic information in a reference audio style file; and synthesise expressive speech from the input text, using an expressive acoustic model including a deep convolutional neural network that is conditioned by at least one of the plura