CereProc’s Paul Welham gets call up to the EU LT Innovate Steering Committee

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 10:30:31 GMT

Global text to speech technology company CereProc today announced that CEO Paul Welham has agreed to take up a position in the Steering Committee of LT-Innovate - The Forum for Europe’s Language Technology Industry

Welham is one of three company representatives appointed to the board, and the position will see him take an active role in supporting the LT Innovate organisation establish a progressive strategy moving forward in the coming year, consistently working to satisfy the agreed Charter. In particular, Welham will be drawing upon his own and CereProc's extensive experience in multilingual text to speech, voice and speech technologies with the aim of bringing the benefits of the advancing language technologies to European citizens and businesses.

Commenting on the appointment, Welham stated: “It’s an honour to be selected to take part in the LT-Innovate Steering Committee, alongside such highly respected individuals. Language technology is continuing to develop at an incredible rate thanks to the research carried out across Europe, and the LT Innovate Forum provides the perfect opportunity to harness advancing technologies and the huge level of expertise that Europe currently boasts, initiating dialogue between European companies, research bodies and potential commercial partners.

“Of fundamental importance to me in playing a role in the LT Innovate Steering Committee is to ensure that the value and potential of innovative language technologies are fully explored, focusing on the challenges we face in pushing forward the commercialisation of language technology, and enabling, where possible, business collaboration and relationships to develop across Europe throughout the industry. I’m looking forward to drawing upon my own and CereProc’s experience to help the European language technology industry compete on the global stage, and thereby to create more high value jobs in Europe. Europe now more than ever needs a successful IT industry to ensure continuing success in all existing and new markets,” Welham added.

CereProc and Telisma voice the announcement of an ideal partnership

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 11:34:58 GMT

Advanced Text to Speech (TTS) solutions company CereProc has agreed a partnership with Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) systems expert Telisma, enabling the creation of the most natural voice input and output systems available on the global market.

In an agreement which marks the connection of two speech technology industry giants, CereProc has been selected by Telisma to support a multi server deployment initiative which demands high quality French, English, Spanish and German voices.

Telisma, an OnMobile Global Ltd company, recognised the potential of integrating the complementary technologies of CereProc, with its own software speech technology, to form powerful and scalable solutions for customers seeking enhanced natural and accurate voice input and output carrier-grade systems which are tuned into specific vernacular language and accents.

Ideal for the project with Telisma, CereProc delivers speech content in multiple languages offering a natural prosody and characterful voices which are pleasant to listen to for long periods of time, essential when interacting with screenless, remote entertainment devices. Setting the standard in TTS technology and custom built voices, CereProc is recognised for English, Spanish German and French, with the latter ‘Metropolitan French’ voice existing as the most natural, realistic and characterful French TTs voice available.

“The partnership with Telisma is certainly a very exciting one. Both companies are operating at the cutting edge of speech technology, so it really is the coming together of the best technologies available on the market and we are thrilled to be involved in the production and delivery of such ground-breaking systems,” said Paul Welham, CEO at CereProc.

Going beyond a partnership of technologies, Telisma and CereProc also worked closely on MRCP server integration with the teliSpeech platform to facilitate the deployment of CereProc voices in telephony environments along with Telisma's technology.

An advanced programme of onsite training provided by CereProc, together with a professional responsiveness - turning around patches and voice updates for Telisma in a timely manner - ensured an efficient and effective integration process. Following CereProc’s training, Telisma now holds the expertise required to harness the unprecedented levels of control and modification capabilities of the core speech synthesis engine CereVoice, optimising the performance and effectiveness of this partnership of such pioneering speech technologies

CereProc is granted patent for its Emotional Speech Synthesis system

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 11:24:31 GMT

Patent rights for Emotional Speech Synthesis give prime position to CereProc in providing best of breed custom built voices which are natural and full of character.

Industry leading text-to-speech (TTS) technology company, CereProc, has been granted a UK patent protecting its exclusive rights to the Emotional Speech Synthesis system, designed to produce full speech synthesis with emotion, for use in multiple sectors.

Chris Pidcock, Chief Voice Engineer at CereProc explained:

“One of our core aims is to create voices that are authentic and full of expression - and emotion is a part of this. We believe that higher quality, more realistic voices will increase the uptake of text-to-speech technology, and open up new markets to us.”

Committed to the research and development of new technologies, CereProc’s latest patent asserts the company’s unique position at the forefront of the global TTS technology industry. Outstripping TTS technology solutions currently available on the market, those which produce robotic and unnatural voices, CereProc’s Emotional Speech Synthesis goes beyond the practices - such as the insertion of laughter or yawns - which are commonplace in the quest to produce more realistic voices.

Achieving greater emotional variation in the actual speech than any competitors on the market, CereProc’s method results in the efficient and cost-effective delivery of custom built voices by simulating multiple emotional states. Producing an increased emotional range, in addition to the widely used insertion of pre-recorded sounds, the patented technology centres on the analysis and manipulation of a constrained set of data.

Enhancing user experience and moving away from the unnatural voices which are limited in use, CereProc’s pioneering TTS technology is effective for use in consumer engagement and marketing initiatives, building a stronger corporate persona through the distribution of brand-matched custom built voices. The Entertainment and Computer Games industries, particularly those projects which involve animation, are also set to benefit from CereProc’s Emotional Speech Synthesis, while the pioneering technology is increasingly valuable to the Healthcare and Education sectors.

“In addition to our other ongoing projects, we are currently working with Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) providers to add emotional TTS to the voice output of their devices. The prospect that these joint ventures could result in enabling people with serious neurological conditions such as Motor Neurone Disease or Cerebral Palsy, to speak with emotion, and in some cases for the first time ever, is really exciting. That is something which the team is truly proud of,” continued Pidcock.

Further information detailing the Emotional Speech Synthesis techniques can be found at:

http://www.cereproc.com/en/about/randd

Advanced Text to Speech technology company CereProc launches CereVoice 3.0

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 10:12:41 GMT

Text-to-speech specialist CereProc has unveiled version 3.0 of its core synthesis technology, introducing a range of features including iPhone compatibility, improved performance and support for an enhanced range of languages.

Launching version 3.0 of its core synthesis engine, CereVoice, the UK's only text-to-speech (TTS) solutions company has updated the service to enhance accessibility and performance. In a release designed to extend the product’s reach in global markets across multiple platforms, voices with character and personality have been included in more languages than ever before, while the introduction of support for iOS brings the technology to mobile phones and tablets for the first time.

“We’re delighted to be able to introduce CereVoice to a whole new international audience with the introduction of three major languages. Our mission has always been to make this an international offering, and this release is an important step forward in our strategy to offer a truly global solution,” said CereProc CEO Paul Welham.

“This is an exciting time for the company, and we’re looking forward to talking with potential new partners in France and Italy who are interested in deploying or distributing high quality text-to-speech systems in their local markets.”

Responding to a blend of increased opportunity and global demand, CereProc have added French, Spanish and Italian to the existing language portfolio of English and German, while also increasing the number of English language accents to include US male and Scottish male voices. The updated diverse range of voices and accents serves to enhance user experience, optimising performance and reception of the realistic speech solutions among local or regional users.

The increased choice of languages heads up a range of new features and upgrades in CereVoice 3.0:

Voices now support 64-bit versions of Windows, SAPI for .NET 4, and the latest version of OS X, Lion

New CereVoice Software Development Kit (SDK) for Windows, OS X and Linux, with a simplified speech API, allowing developers to integrate CereVoice into their application with just a few lines of code

New iPhone OS (iOS) SDK, bringing CereVoice to mobile phones and tablets for the first time

Faster, more accurate text processing engine, with support for additional SSML and VoiceXML features

Improved cServer performance allowing more channels and faster speech synthesis, even on commodity hardware (up to 340 x real time performance on Intel Core i7)

New MRCP standard (Media Resource Control Protocol, v1 and v2) cServer Connector, simplifying deployment of our robust, high performance, multi-channel cServer on telephony platforms

Improved speech compression for crisper, clearer audio quality up to 48khz

Although the new English, US and Scottish voices have been added to CereProc’s commercial library, the advanced speech technology experts have made the Scottish male voice available free to schools in Scotland via the Scottish Voice website at http://www.thescottishvoice.org.uk.

Paul Welham added: “While the voices that bring their devices alive are the natural focus for our users, this release has also been very much about constantly improving the technology that makes it all run. These upgrades have been designed to make CereVoice an even more robust, more powerful tool.”

Voices can be downloaded at http://www.cereproc.com/en/store. For SDK and cServer contact sales via http://www.cereproc.com/en/contactus

Top Articles Tagged with cereproc

CereProc’s Paul Welham gets call up to the EU LT Innovate Steering Committee

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CereProc is granted patent for its Emotional Speech Synthesis system

Advanced Text to Speech technology company CereProc launches CereVoice 3.0