1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to synthetic voices and more specifically to a system and method of blending several different synthetic voices to obtain a new synthetic voice having at least one of the characteristics of the different voices.
2. Introduction
Text-to-speech (TTS) systems typically offer the user a choice of synthetic voices from a relatively small number of voices. For example, many systems allow users to select a male or female voice to interact with. When a person desires a voice having a particular feature, a user must select of voice that inherently has that characteristic such as a particular accent. This approach presents challenges for a user who may desire a voice having characteristics that are not available. There are not an unlimited number of TTS voices because each voice is costly and time consuming to generate. Therefore, there are a limited number of voices and voices having specific characteristics.
Given the small number of choices available to the average user when selecting a synthetic voice, there is a need in the art for more flexibility to enable a user to obtain a synthetic voice having the desired characteristics. What is further needed in the art is a system and method of obtaining a desired synthetic voice utilizing existing synthetic voices.