An Automatic Talking Apparatus using pre-recorded speech segments and its application to telephone numbers speech is treated from the point of view of realization of a practical model using a magnetic drum recorder. This research model, consisting of 20 channels on magnetic drum and an editing apparatus, enabled us to handle the separation and copulation of prerecorded speech segment. As the first step of the experiments, the quality grades of number speech of a simple case when a single segment is allocated to a digit, were measured on the "Roting Scale". This experiment showed that segments, of a cap-type pitch pattern which were discreetly uttered, sounded best and that the optimum gap between segments is about 50 milliseconds. As the next stage, we used more kinds of segments for each digit and measured the quality. As a result, the more kinds of segments we used, the better the quality of speech could be obtained. Three segments were sufficient for near natural utterance. And pitch movements were found to play a fairly important role in this system.
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