The Jess Blizzard Challenge 2006 Entry

This paper describes the version of the Jess system that partici- pated in the Blizzard Challenge 2006. The Jess system consists of a suite of software tools for processing text and speech. The largest component of the system is a multi-platform unit selection speech synthesiser that uses Unicode and the International Phonetic Al- phabet (IPA). The system has been designed to be modular so that different synthesiser algorithms can be implemented in a single instance of the system, allowing for alternative techniques to be compared with the same input and target data. In this paper we dis- cuss the algorithms used in the Jess synthesiser to produce speech, insights gained from participation in the Blizzard Challenge 2006, and our intended areas of future work.