A comparison of the intelligibility of some low cost speech synthesis devices

A standard test of phonemic differentiation was used to measure the intelligibility of some common, low cost speech synthesis products. The test measures intelligibility for the distinctive features of speech, namely Voicing, Nasality, Sustention, Sibilation, Graveness and Compactness. Statistical analysis of the data shows significant differences in the intelligibility scores for Phoneme Based Synthesis, Linear Predictive Coding Synthesis and Adaptive Differential Pulse Code Modulation Synthesis.