This page is intended to support students on the AC41003 / AC51009 Multimedia: Audio module, but should be of wider appeal too. Please e-mail me if there are any bad links on this page, or to suggest new links to add (all links were tested and working on the above date).

COMMERCIAL AND RESEARCH SPEECH SYNTHESIS SYSTEMS

• Vocalizer from Nuance - excellent commercial speech technology systems for TTS
• Microsoft Speech SDK- includes a speech synthesiser (American)
• DECtalk from Fonix - originally a product of the Digital Equipment Corporation, DECtalk is still the best commerical formant synthesiser (American)
• Infovox from Acapela - information and demonstrations of this multi-lingual (mostly European) formant TTS system (Swedish)
• CSTR's Festival System - demonstrations of the Festival concatenative TTS system (British English)

EMOTION IN SPEECH and SPEECH SYNTHESIS

• HAMLET - the University of Dundee's synthetic speech-with-emotion system, includes demonstrations of DECtalk-based HAMLET, and an emotion system based on BT's Laureate; also included are some DECtalk demonstrations including impersonations and songs
• University of Geneva - Emotion Research Group - one of the most important and long running research groups working on emotions
• Affect Editor - MIT's emotion system, developed at the same time as HAMLET, includes demonstrations (American)
• University of Essex - Speech Group - home of the SPRUCE TTS system which includes pragmatic content, also some teaching information
• KTH - demonstrations of the KTH synthesiser speaking with emotions (Swedish)
• Universities of Reading/Leeds - Emotion in Speech Project - ESRC/MoD project to build a labelled database of emotional speech
• Seikei University - Morishima Lab - information and demonstrations of emotion in Japanese TTS

COMMERCIAL SPEECH RECOGNITION SYSTEMS

• Dragon Systems from Nuance - excellent ASR product
• IBM - ViaVoice commercial ASR system.
• Philips dictation solutions.
• Vocalis - speech technology manufacturers.
• Telephonetics - UK Speech recognition company.

MUSIC

• Noteworthy Software - home of the excellent music sequencer Noteworthy Composer (shareware)
• Cakewalk - industry standard music sequencer software
• Sibelius Software - professional music sequencer software
• Wendy Carlos - official homepage for the key figure in the history of synthesised music; many classical recordings (especially Bach), and some original compositions
• Isao Tomita - more classical music performed electronically
• Creative Labs - makers of Sound Blaster sound cards
• Roland UK - music synthesiser manufacturers
• Yamaha - music synthesiser manufacturers
• How Music Works - superb 2006 TV series by Howard Goodall - Dr. Murray has this on video, please ask if you want to borrow it
• Secrets of Synthesis - a masterclass in music synthesis hosted by Wendy Carlos - Dr. Murray has this on CD, please ask if you want to borrow it

AUDIO UTILITIES

• GoldWave - the GoldWave waveform editor and the Multiquence digital multi-track sound editor (shareware)
• Audacity - sound editing software
• Gram - simple but excellent spectrogram generator (freeware)
• Winamp - nifty MP3 audio player (freeware)

COMMERCIAL AND ACADEMIC RESEARCH

• Microsoft Speech Technology Group - a latecomer to speech technology, Microsoft now has its own speech research group
• Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm - Dept. of Speech, Music and Hearing is one of the longest running and most highly regarded research groups in the area of speech science and speech technology (and originators of the Infovox TTS system); this excellent site includes downloadable research papers and audio demonstrations
• University College London Centre for Speech and Hearing Sciences - another long running and highly regarded research centre in speech science (and originators of the laryngograph), also offering many taught courses in speech science
• University of Edinburgh Centre for Speech Technology Research (CSTR) - a research unit which has done work on ASR and TTS, including the Festival TTS System
• MBROLA project - European project to develop a concatenative speech synthesiser for many languages - the core speech engine is available free
• Universities of Reading/Leeds - Emotion in Speech Project - ESRC/MoD project to build a labelled database of emotional speech
• University of Essex - Speech Group - home of the SPRUCE TTS system which includes pragmatic content, also some teaching information
• Endoscopic view of vocal folds during speech production
• AT&T Labs - many speech-related projects, also an excellent video demonstrating wave propagation.

PROFESSIONAL AND SUPPORT BODIES

• International Speech Communication Association (ISCA) - promoting speech communication science and technology in industry and academia (previously known as ESCA, the European ...); promoters of Eurospeech, the main European speech conference (held bi-annually), and regular Tutorial and Research Workshops (ITRWs) on various speech-related topics
• SOCRATES Thematic Network in Phonetics and Speech Communication - communication and information forum for speech scientists; University of Dundee is a member [hosted at University of Essex]
• European Language and Speech Network (ELSNET) - communication and information forum for speech scientists with the goal of multi-lingual speech and natural language systems with unrestricted coverage of written and spoken language; University of Dundee is a member
• Institute of Acoustics (IoA) - professional institution for all acoustics-related fields, including a Speech Group which is one of the main UK communication and information fora for speech scientists
• SAMPA - information on the SAMPA computer readable phonetic alphabet(s) [hosted at UCL]
• A page of speech links [hosted at University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC) Perceptual Science Laboratory (PSL)]

PUBLICATIONS

• Speech Communication - the main European journal on speech science and speech technology
• Computer Speech and Language - another good journal on speech science and speech technology
• "HAL's Legacy" - a book from MIT Press about HAL, the computer featured in "2001: A Space Odyssey", and how realistic he is with our current scientific knowledge; includes state-of-the-art descriptions on ASR, TTS and other technologies by leaders in these fields

AUDIO ARCHIVES AND TRIVIA

• The Answering Machine has all the fun answering machine messages you'd ever want
• Classic MIDI Archives - hundreds of classical MIDI files, sorted and graded
• The Cyber Hymnal has words and MIDI music for just about every hymn