Loquendo is delighted to present the latest version of its TTS voice engine, incorporating several dramatic leaps forward in terms of quality (fluency, naturalness, and accuracy) of pronunciation across the full range of the 39 Loquendo voices in 17 languages.

Fluency has seen major advances thanks to the development of Concatenation Smoothing, successfully resolving acoustic discontinuities in the speech synthesis.

Naturalness has been enhanced by the refinement of phrasing and prosody, adding pauses and vocal intonations that better correspond with the narrative of a text to imitate more closely the characteristics of the human voice.

Accuracy of pronunciation has been strengthened by the use of the Morphological Analyser, which examines word structure to resolve pronunciation ambiguities.

Furthermore, you can now create your own customised voices. Using any Loquendo voice, it is possible to adjust the pitch, speaking rate, timbre etc, and, by saving the settings, construct a voice with a character all of its own. You can, for example, create the voice of a child, an elderly person, or a cartoon character.

The options for customising have been even further expanded with Loquendo LexEditor, where you can insert your own phonetic transcriptions of specific names or words, so tailoring the voice synthesis to variations in pronunciation as well as overcoming some of the variants in spelling. Further to this, specific lexicons can be added (e.g. for reading SMS abbreviations), or particular pronunciation styles (e.g. for reading data in technical documents) so rendering Loquendo TTS ever more adaptable for use in specific contexts.

In addition, a range of audio controls, such as reverb and stereo, can be applied to any text. With these effects, a particular audio environment can be created to give the impression, for example, of a small room or a large hall, while voices can be positioned around this space, by the use of stereo, to create a wide depth of field. Music can also be added and, if required, even rhythmically synchronized with the reading of the text.

About Loquendo - Vocal Technology and Services
With over 30 years of R&D expertise, Loquendo is at the forefront of the global speech technologies market. Its high-quality, high-performance technologies (Loquendo TTS - text to speech, Loquendo ASR - automatic speech recognition, Loquendo Speech Server, Loquendo Speaker Verification) and platforms guarantee systems integrators the best solutions in 17 languages and 39 voices.

Currently available languages include U.S. and U.K. English, Castilian, Catalan, Mexican, Chilean, Argentinean and American Spanish, Italian, German, French, Greek, Mandarin Chinese, Dutch, Brazilian, Portuguese and Swedish - in both male and female voices. Many more are under development to give customers expanded reach in today's global marketplace.

Loquendo deploys technologies that power millions of calls every day in telecommunications and enterprise markets throughout the world.

For more information, visit www.loquendo.com.