Blizzard Challenge 2009

CSTR and others are pleased to announce that the listening tests for the Blizzard Challenge 2009 are now running. The Blizzard Challenge is an annual open speech synthesis evaluation in which participants build voices using common data, and a large listening test is used to compare them. Participants include some of the leading commercial and academic research groups in the field.

I would appreciate your help in getting as many listeners to participate as possible, by forwarding this message on to other lists, colleagues, students, and of course taking part yourself.

The listening test should take 30-60 minutes to complete, and can be done in stages if you wish. You do not need to be a native speaker of the language in order to take part. There are 4 different start pages for the listening test, as follows:

English

Volunteers:
http://groups.inf.ed.ac.uk/blizzard/blizzard2009/english/register-ER.html

Speech Experts:
http://groups.inf.ed.ac.uk/blizzard/blizzard2009/english/register-ES.html

Mandarin Chinese:

Volunteers:
http://groups.inf.ed.ac.uk/blizzard/blizzard2009/mandarin/register-MR.html

Speech Experts:
http://groups.inf.ed.ac.uk/blizzard/blizzard2009/mandarin/register-MS.html

Whether you consider yourself a 'speech expert' is left to your own
judgement.