Other Tuning - Why ARPABET?

Synthesizer V Studio
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I’m looking a Felicia…

Here’s the phrase: “Look at the ladder; there’s a paw-print. By Moon-bird’s hot egg, you hear pure cows behind car and boat coin machines.”

Because of the phoneme dictionary being ARPABET - there are missing sounds that British English Speakers use and expect to hear…

Why not move over to X-SAMPA and include the missing sounds so we can all be happy? One notable sound is the ‘o’ in hot, bot, cot we don’t say hæt, bæt, etc too nasal and too much ‘eeee’ in it.

Here’s Felicia (settings comments below):

As already mentioned: the ‘o’ in hot is difficult to get using the American ARPABET spellings. It sound more like hæt. Shifting the tone right down reduces the nasal quality and seems to help?

Word endings t, d, v, s, z are not always pronounced as strongly as expected and completely blank on the phoneme panel. Not even visible on the waveshape and yet can be heard faintly???

Ending to ‘ladder’ is not [er] but [ax] - schwa.

‘And’ is another unpredictable word sometimes und, -nd, an- or ænd - other variations also available!

Felicia was altered thus:

Airy Timbre - 150%; Bright Pronunciation - 150%; Powerful Pitch - 150% and Tone Shift -100 cents (I know these are extreme - but judge for yourself the result)

And just to top if off - fiddling with Felicia to get something akin to what I’d like took much longer than doing the same exercise with Vocaloid 6 AI Sarah…

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Now I’m looking at Ninezero…

Here’s the phrase: “The curious white goat named Jaws ate pears near an unusually demure orange owl and a noisy cat.”

Here’s Ninezero:

Once again the word cat with a short -a- sound needs less ‘eee’ so I used the mouth opening to alter it.

General settings used: Solid pronunciation - 120%; Muted timbre - 120%; Gender - 0.25

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Still looking at Ninezero …

Taking the phrase: “The boss lost the odd box of hot coffee pots.”

The British English ‘o’ (/ɒ/) sound is not what Ninezero produces ‘out the box’! Have a listen:

This sound requires rounder lips, a shorter duration and a tongue slightly lower in the mouth. The first two are doable in SV2 and here’s the result:

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Looking at Solaria…

Taking the following arbitrary list of words covering all British English vowel sounds: “Crab, Dark, Flair, Way, Check, Smirk, Near, Sea, Rib, Choir, Fly, Throb, Claw, Sure, Brow, Power*, Joy, Crow, Stub, Hook, [and] Glue.”

  • Power / tour as pronounced by posh British speakers, “Loik watt I is…”

I used SV1 - Solaria; SV2 - Solaria which offered the following ARPABET phonemes:
[k r ae b] [d aa r k] [f l eh r] [w ey] [ch eh k] [s m er k] [n ih r] [s iy] [r ih b] [k w ay er] [f l ay] [th r aa b] [c l ao] [sh uh r] [b r aw n] [p aw er] [jh oy] [k r ow] [s t ah b] [hh uh k] [g l uw]

…and (for the fun of it) Vocaloid6:AI Jessica with the following x-Sampa phonemes:
[kh r { b] [dh Q@ r k] [f l e@] [w eI] [tS e k] [s m @r k] [n I@] [s i:] [r I b] [k w aI r] [f l aI] [T r Q b] [kh l O: w] [S U@] [bh r aU] [ph aU r] [dZ OI] [kh r @U] [s t V b] [h U@ k] [gh l u:]

The following audio shows all three singing together then individually in the order SV1; SV2 and Vocaloid6

Conclusion
Vocaloid 6 offers greater control over vowel sounds there are 21 when compared to SV’s offering of just 16.