MARY TTS 4.1.0: Release notes

New features for expressive TTS

• Prosody control for HMM-based voices. Using the SSML <prosody> tag, it is now possible to control the intonation generated for HMM-based voices from markup. Of particular interest is the “contour” attribute, which allows you to change the shape of the intonation curve. For details and examples, see ProsodySpecificationSupport.
• Expressive vocalizations in certain unit selection voices. MaryXML now supports a new <vocalization> tag, with which you can request the generation of non-verbal or para-verbal expressions as they are often produced by the listener in a conversation, such as “yeah”, “m-hm”, laughter, sigh, etc. For details and examples, see VocalizationSynthesis.

New voices

• For British English, we release HMM-based versions of the four voices Poppy, Spike, Obadiah and Prudence.
• Updated versions of many of the previously existing voices, with improved quality.

Bugfixes and other improvements

• Faster startup times. MARY 4.1.0 starts nearly twice as fast and needs about 30% less physical memory compared to MARY 4.0.0, due to the use of memory mapping for unit selection voices.
• Quality of German and English components improved. A number of bugs were fixed which had degraded the quality of the synthesis results in MARY 4.0.0:
  • #297 German words spelled out when they shouldn’t
  • #273 Several problems with abbreviations in German
  • #308 German compound analysis over-active
  • #287 Abbreviations in German trigger major boundary insertion
  • #304 English support for apostrophies is broken
• Multiple bugs were also fixed under the surface. For a full list, see http://mary.opendfki.de/query?status=closed&group=resolution&milestone=4.1

More info

For more background information, please also refer to the Release notes of MARY 4.0.0.