An Economical Hardware Realization of a Digital Linear Predictive Speech Synthesizer

Speech analysis/synthesis algorithms utilizing linear prediction coefficients have certain advantages over those employing formantbased techniques. For example, 4-kHz speech samples may be synthesized using a basic sequence of 10 multiply/adds followed by a single addition of the current sample of the excitation function. Real-time software synthesis of 4-kHz speech is possible (using this technique) on certain 16-b minicomputers, but the central processing unit (CPU) overhead may approach 100 percent. We describe an economical (< 600-dollar) hardware realization of a 4-kHz digital linear predictive speech synthesizer which requires, at most, a CPU overhead of about 40 percent real time. The device is constructed of standard TTL/MOS logic and consists (essentially) of a high speed 2's complement multiplier/adder capable of calculating a 26-b product (10-b speech samples, 16-b coefficients) in 0.33 μs, and a dual shift register. In addition, a procedure is discussed which enables the device to be used both as a formant synthesizer for vowels or voiced consonant production, and as a predictive synthesizer for other speech sounds. This procedure, hybrid synthesis, permits the utilization of formant concatenation techniques and reduces the coefficient storage required to specify vowels/voiced consonants by about 60 percent.