CMU Blizzard 2008: Optimally using a large database for unit selection synthesis.

This paper describes CMU’s entry for the Blizzard Challenge 2008. Our eventual system consisted of a fairly conventional layered cluster based unit selection system using the most predictable subset of the whole UK speech databases. This paper describes the methods we used to find the most reliable subset and the techniques used to optimize the selection. An additional technique that was used was to automatically detect “hard” text and modify the phrasing algorithm accordingly. Although this technique was targeted at SUS utterances it was in place for all utterances. CMU’s entry is letter M in the results.