This page is intended to support students on the AC42002/AC52008 Research Frontiers (Speech & Audio Processing) 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 some speech synthesiser engines
• FonixTalk from SpeechFX - originally DECtalk, a product of the Digital Equipment Corporation, DECtalk is still the best commerical formant synthesiser (American)
• RealVoice also from SpeechFX
• Voices (originally Infovox) from Acapela - information and demonstrations of this multi-lingual (mostly European) formant TTS system
• Cereproc - information and demonstrations of this Scottish multi-lingual TTS system
  Cereproc was a spin-out company from the University of Edinburgh which developed the 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
• Swiss Center for Affective Sciences at the University of Geneva - one of the most important and long running research groups working on emotions
• Division of Speech, Music and Hearing at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm - one of the longest-running research groups on speech analysis and synthesis

COMMERCIAL SPEECH RECOGNITION SYSTEMS

• Dragon Systems from Nuance - excellent ASR product
• Philips dictation solutions
• Telephonetics - telephone services company

MUSIC

• Noteworthy Composer - the excellent music sequencer Noteworthy Composer (shareware)
• Cakewalk - industry standard music sequencer software
• Mozart Software - another music sequencer software
• Sibelius Software from Avid - 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 by the late Japanese musician
• Creative Labs - makers of sound cards and other audio-related hardware
• Roland UK - music synthesiser manufacturers
• Yamaha - music synthesiser manufacturers
• Vocaloid - a singing synthesiser by Yamaha
• 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
• 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
• KTH Royal Institute of Technology, 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 Division of Psychology and Language 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
• AT&T Labs - many speech-related projects, also an excellent video demonstrating wave propagation.
• University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC) Perceptual Science Laboratory (PSL)

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
• 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]

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