[gnuspeech-contact] voice control in articulatory vs. HMM-based synthesis

[Eric Zoerner]

I have a theoretical question for the list regarding comparison of  
speech synthesis techniques and their capabilities for voice control/ 
modification at runtime while maintaining naturalness.

It is pretty clear to me that articulatory speech synthesis  
potentially has a great deal of flexibility when it comes to  
dynamically altering the voice, e.g. for natural intonation,  
emotional speech, singing, changing dialect or language, or changing  
the identity/gender/age of the speaker, etc.

I am interested in comparing these capabilities to those in HMM-based  
synthesis. Can anyone comment on or point me to information regarding  
the extent that HMM-based synthesis (e.g. using the HTS toolkit) has  
capabilities in this regard?

Would it be fair to say that while there may be more control over the  
voice during the training phase in HMM-based synthesis as compared to  
unit-concatenative approaches, the feasibility of controlling the  
voice at runtime in HMM-based synthesis is about as limited as that  
with unit-concatenation (i.e. without losing its perceived  
"naturalness")?