Loquendo, the global speech technology company, today announces the release of Loquendo TTS 7.3. This new version of the text-to-speech technology provides many key new features and supports the Turkish language with the brand new voice of Kerem.

Like all of Loquendo's voices, Kerem is available for Telephony, Multimedia and Embedded applications, allowing integrators to select the footprint that best suits their requirements, and guaranteeing the same wide range of high-quality voices and languages all with the same core engine. Kerem is the latest of our voices to be enriched with “expressive cues”, Loquendo’s innovative and award-winning tool for achieving truly natural sounding speech.

Loquendo is the very first speech company to offer an 'emotional' component, a major advance in speech technology, giving Loquendo's voices truly lifelike expression and a far wider emotional range.

Besides conveying Emotional Expressivity, Loquendo TTS provides Mixed Language support and Audio Mixing.

Loquendo TTS is now available in 21 languages with a total of 51 personas.

Currently available languages include U.S. and U.K. English, Castilian, Catalan, American Spanish, Mexican, Chilean and Argentinean Spanish, Italian, German, Esperanto, French, Dutch, Greek, Mandarin Chinese, Brazilian, Portuguese, Swedish, Turkish, Canadian French and Polish in both male and female voices.

The latest Loquendo TTS release has been enriched with a powerful Java API layer which makes all TTS features available to Java programmers.

With the new Dynamic Range Control algorithm, integrated in the TTS engine, users can now benefit from improved voice intelligibility in any noisy environment. Simply using runtime controls, prompts can easily be fine-tuned and audio easily adapted to specific speakers and audio devices.

Voice service developers can now find this useful wizard built into the Loquendo TTS Director tool.

Try the new Dynamic Range Control and all the other Loquendo TTS functionalities at SpeechTek 2007, NY, on August 20-23 in the New York Marriott Marquis, Booth #509.

Find out more on the benefits of the implementation of the algorithm, on Tuesday, August 21, 2007 -TRACK D: INNOVATIVE SPEECH APPLICATIONS, D201 - Speech Technology in Advanced Multimodal Mobile Service for the Dortmund Fire Fighters' Emergency Forces, 10:45 am - 12:00 pm (Klaus Schäfer, Fire Department of Dortmund, Germany, Prof. Rainer Koch, University of Paderborn, with Davide Bonardo, Loquendo).

Moreover, Loquendo now fully supports the X-SAMPA phonetic alphabet, as well as the SAMPA variants from TeleAtlas® and Navteq™.

Loquendo TTS now also supports a huge number of different text encodings, accepting input text in utf-16, utf-8, iso-8859-x, oem, windows-12xx, etc.

Come and meet Loquendo from August 20-23, 2007 in Booth #509 during the three-day exhibition at the New York Marriott Marquis. And last, but by no means least, don't miss Loquendo's Speeches at SpeechTEK.

About Loquendo - Vocal Technology and Services
With over 30 years experience in speech technology, Loquendo is at the forefront of the global speech market. Loquendo TTS, Loquendo ASR, Loquendo Speaker Verification and the Loquendo VoiceXML/CCXML Platform are high-quality, high-performance technologies that guarantee systems integrators the best solutions in 21 languages with 51 voices.

Loquendo is the only speech technology vendor that provides a complete product line for navigation and handheld devices, desktop PCs and telephony servers, guaranteeing the same portfolio of languages and the same core engine in all these environments.
Many enterprises and carriers worldwide have recognized the Loquendo difference, advanced technologies that power millions of calls every day in telecommunications and enterprise markets across the globe.

Loquendo is a Telecom Italia company headquartered in Turin, Italy, with offices in the US, Spain, Germany and France, and a worldwide network of partners. For more information about Loquendo, and to hear demos of all the Loquendo voices, go to www.loquendo.com.