KR20010016404A - Multicodec player having text-to-speech conversion function - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE: A multicodec player is provided to reproduce converted speed information with an original music by converting relative text information to a speech. CONSTITUTION: A multicodec player comprises a control unit(109), a memory(102), a codec unit, an A/D converter(104) and a D/A converter(105). A control program is stored in the memory. The control program converts relative text information about music in a digital music file to a speech with a text/speech conversion program. The control program reproduces the speech conversion information of text information when the digital music is reproduced. A user listens to the music with the relative information. Thereby, the user understands the music deeply.

Description

Multicodec player having text-to-speech conversion function

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a multicodec player, and more particularly, to a text-to-speech conversion system (TTS) for text information carried with the music when playing digital music downloaded through the Internet. The present invention relates to a multi-codec player having a text / voice conversion function for converting a voice into a voice and reproducing the converted voice information together with the original music.

The multicodec player is a device that plays ELWLWXKF music using compression methods such as AA, MP3, and WMA, which are audio data compression technologies. While the size of a music file on a CD is typically 30-50 MB, compression technology can reduce data capacity to about one-twelfth the original, while maintaining sound quality at about the same level. This reduced file size is only 2-5 MB per song, so you can easily send and receive high-quality music over the network.

Currently, files made by various compression methods can be seen easily in domestic PC communication and the Internet, and are popular among netizens. The MP3 homepage, which offers hundreds of thousands of music files, is gaining popularity around the world because it allows you to listen to only the music you want without having to buy a record and to easily transfer it to another PC.

Because an entire hour's worth of music CDs can be downloaded over the web in minutes, digital music is expected to revolutionize the way the music is distributed and sold. However, the world's major labels are expected to hesitate to distribute digital music files (eg, MP3 music files) over the Web until standardized forms of copyright protection in any form are standardized. In Korea, the Korea Music Copyright Association (KOMCA) enacted and implemented the "Standards for the Use of Music Works over the PC Network" in 1997, enabling the payment of PC communication services using MP3.

Digital music can be listened to on a PC through software without any additional hardware such as a CD player. Recently, portable MP3 players have been introduced to download and carry MP3 music from a PC. There are even integrated products that allow you to listen to MP3 music on your mobile phone.

By the way, through the conventional MP3 players, multi-codec players, cassette radios, and the like, only music that is mostly stored (recorded) on a storage (recording) medium is played, and information related to the music, for example, a song title Information such as a singer's name, song lyrics, or the background in which the song was made or a brief description of what the song is trying to sing is displayed only on the display device.

Thus, in order to obtain such song information using the conventional music players, a special circuit configuration must be added to enable display on the music player. In addition, even when a display is provided, only a song storing display-only reproduction information can be displayed. Therefore, the user (music listener) can be limited in various ways to obtain information related to music.

The present invention has been made in view of the above problems, and has a text / voice conversion function that converts text information related to the music into a voice and reproduces the converted voice information together with the original music when playing digital music. Its purpose is to provide a multicodec player.

The following drawings are attached to the specification to illustrate preferred embodiments of the present invention, together with a detailed description of the present invention to help understand the spirit of the present invention. Therefore, the present invention should not be construed as limited to the matter disclosed in such drawings.

1 is a block diagram schematically showing an internal system configuration of a multicodec player having a text / voice conversion function according to the present invention.

2 is a schematic block diagram of a text / voice conversion system employed in a multicodec player having a text / voice conversion function according to the present invention.

3 is a flowchart showing a process of playing a digital music file by a multicodec player having a text / voice conversion function according to the present invention.

<Explanation of symbols for main parts of drawing>

101 Interface section 102 Memory

103 ... Codec 104 ... A / D Converter

105 ... D / A converter 106 ... Key controls

107 Display ... 108 Power supply

109 control unit 110 amplifier

201 ... Language processing unit 202 ... Rhyme processing unit

203 ... Signal Processing Unit ... 204 Synthesis Unit Database

In order to achieve the above object, a multicodec player having a text / voice conversion function according to the present invention includes a control unit, a memory, a codec unit, an analog / digital converter, and a digital / analog converter.

The memory program includes a control program that converts and stores text information related to music stored in a digital music file into voice using a text / voice conversion program, and also plays back voice conversion information of the text information during digital music playback. The characteristic is that it is stored.

According to the present invention, when playing digital music, the text information related to the music is converted into a voice using a text / voice conversion system and played together with the original music, so that the user (listener) listens to the music. At the same time, you can listen to music-related information (song titles, singer names, song lyrics, brief descriptions of the song, etc.) to broaden your understanding of the music and feel the other dimension of listening to music. Can be.

Hereinafter, exemplary embodiments of the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings. Prior to this, terms or words used in the specification and claims should not be construed as being limited to the common or dictionary meaning. That is, the inventor should be interpreted as meanings and concepts corresponding to the technical idea of the present invention on the basis of the principle that the concept of terms can be arbitrarily appropriately defined in order to best describe his invention. Therefore, the embodiments described in the specification and the configuration shown in the drawings are only the most preferred embodiments of the present invention and do not represent all of the technical idea of the present invention, various modifications that can be replaced at the time of the present application It should be understood that there may be equivalents and variations.

1 is a block diagram schematically illustrating an internal system configuration of a multicodec player having a text / voice conversion function according to the present invention.

Referring to FIG. 1, the multicodec player 100 having the text / voice conversion function according to the present invention has a configuration of a conventional multicodec player in terms of hardware. That is, the multicodec player 100 of the present invention includes an interface unit 101, a memory 102, a codec unit 103, an analog / digital conversion unit 104, a digital / analog conversion unit 105, a key operation unit ( 106, a display unit 107, a power supply unit 108, and a control unit 109.

The interface unit 101 enables data communication between the multicodec player 100 and the external computer 90. The interface unit 101 interfaces the bidirectional data communication between the computer 90 and the control unit 109 in response to the control signal.

The memory 102 stores various files downloaded from the computer 90 and voice data files encoded by the codec unit 103. In particular, the memory 102 stores a text / voice conversion (TTS) program and a control program for converting text information stored in a digital music file into speech using the text / voice conversion program.

The codec unit 103 has a coding function and a decoding function. When playing the digital music file stored in the memory 102, the codec unit 103 decompresses the digital music file provided from the control unit 109, decodes the audio data in the form of a bit stream, and outputs the decoded audio data. When the digital voice data is received from the analog / digital converter 104, the codec unit 103 encodes the digital voice data in a PCM (Pulse Coded Modulation) method or an ADPCM (Adaptive Differential Pulse Coded Modulation) method.

The analog / digital converter 104 converts the analog voice signal input through the external microphone 113 or the built-in microphone 112 into digital voice data.

The digital / analog converter 105 converts the decoded voice data provided from the codec unit 103 into an analog voice signal under the control of the controller 109.

The key operation unit 106 is composed of function keys such as a play / stop key, a forward / reverse key, a volume up / down key, a selection key, and a slide key for key hold on / off.

The display unit 107 is composed of a liquid crystal display (LCD) having an icon display window and a graphic dot display window, and an LCD driver. In the icon display window, for example, icons such as battery remaining amount display, key hold display, play mode display, genre display, volume display, and memory remaining display are displayed. In the graphic dot display window, song information, telephone number information, memo information, and the like are displayed. Data relating to these information is stored in the memory 102 in the form of bitmap data, and thus is displayed as a bitmap image directly on the display window without any special signal processing.

The power supply unit 108 is configured to receive power from the outside through the battery 117 or the DC power adapter jack 118 installed in the housing. This power supply 108 provides an operating voltage Vcc to each component of the system.

The control unit 109 is composed of a microcomputer. The microcomputer includes a CPU, a system RAM, a ROM, and the like on a single chip. The controller 109 is connected to the external computer 90 through the interface unit 101, receives the selected file from the computer 90, and stores the selected file in the memory 102. Then, the voice data encoded by the codec unit 103 is stored in the memory 102 in the form of a PCM or ADPCM file. In addition, the digital music file or the voice data file stored in the memory 102 is read and transmitted to the codec unit 103 in response to the selection signal of the key input unit 106, and the codec unit 103 and the digital / analog converter 105 are read. Control to convert the read file into an audio output signal. In particular, the controller 109 controls the analog voice signal applied to the analog-to-digital converter 104 to be sampled at a predetermined frequency and converted into digital data, and the sampled digital data is controlled to be compressed by the codec unit 103. On the other hand, it controls to be converted into PCM data or ADPCM data file. In FIG. 1, reference numeral 110 denotes an amplifier for amplifying a voice signal input through the built-in microphone 112, 111 is a line input jack for connecting an external microphone 113, etc. 114 is an earphone 116 connecting jack, 115 Indicates a line output jack for connecting an external speaker or the like, respectively.

The computer 90 connected to the multicodec player 100 having the above configuration is an example of an external data providing apparatus. Another example that can be used as an external data providing device is a recently marketed data vending system. The computer 90 may be, for example, a personal computer system having a communication environment in which Windows of Microsoft Corporation is installed as an operating system and enabling data communication with external resources through the Internet 80. In addition, the computer 90 is preferably provided with a management program that provides an integrated management function of the file between the multi-codec player 100 and the computer 90. By this management program, music files (eg, MP3 music files) downloaded to the computer 90 via the Internet 80 or various types of files stored in the hard disk of the computer 90 are stored in the multicodec player 100. ), And conversely, various files stored in the multicodec player 100 may be uploaded to the computer 90.

On the other hand, Figure 2 is a schematic block diagram of a text / voice conversion system employed in a multi-codec player having a text / voice conversion function according to the present invention.

Referring to FIG. 2, the text / voice conversion system includes a language processor 201, a rhyme processor 202, a signal processor 203, and a synthesis unit database 204.

The language processor 201 converts the text into a phoneme string, estimates the rhyme information, and symbolizes it. Here, the symbols of the rhyme information are estimated from phrases, clauses, boundaries, accent positions in the words, sentence patterns, etc. using the syntax structure analysis results.

The prosody processor 202 calculates the value of the prosody control parameter by using a rule and a table from the symbolized prosody information. Rhyme control parameters include phoneme duration, pitch pattern, energy pattern, and rest period information.

The signal processor 203 generates a synthesized sound by using the data in the synthesis unit database 204 and the rhythm control parameter.

The synthesis unit database 204 transmits necessary data to the signal processor 203 as a database used for a speech synthesis algorithm.

The text / voice conversion system having the above configuration is installed as a program in a computer or a music player, and serves to convert text input into the system according to a control command of a controller of the corresponding device.

Next, an operation of the multicodec player having the text / voice conversion function according to the present invention having the above configuration will be briefly described with reference to FIGS. 1 to 3.

In order to play a digital music file by a multi-codec player having a text / voice conversion function according to the present invention, after downloading the digital music file through a computer, the downloaded music file is transferred to the multi-codec player of the present invention for playback. Alternatively, there is a method of directly downloading and playing MP3 music files from an MP3 file vending machine. In the present embodiment, a case where a digital music file is downloaded through a computer, transferred to a player of the present invention, and played is described as an example.

3 is a flowchart illustrating a process of playing a digital music file by a multicodec player having a text / voice conversion function according to the present invention.

Referring to FIG. 3, when a user wants to download digital music provided through the Internet 80 through the computer 90, a user (music listener) generally first visits a digital music providing site on the Internet through the computer 90. You will be connected to the music file you want to listen to. Thereafter, the downloaded digital music file is transmitted to the multicodec player 100 using a dedicated program connecting the computer 90 and the multicodec player 100.

In this way, when the digital music file is transmitted from the computer 90 to the multicodec player 100, the control unit 109 controls the text information (for example, the song title, the singer's name) stored with the music in the digital music file. Song lyrics, a brief description of the song, etc.) are read from the digital music file (step 301). Thereafter, the controller 109 retrieves and executes the text / voice conversion program stored in the memory 102. In other words, the song information in the form of text is provided as an input element for executing the text / voice conversion program. When text information is input, the language processing unit 201 (see FIG. 2) converts the input text into a phoneme string, estimates rhyme information, and symbolizes it. Here, the symbols of the rhyme information are estimated from phrases, clauses, boundaries, accent positions in the words, sentence patterns, etc. using the syntax structure analysis results. When the text is symbolized by the language processor 201, the rhyme processor 202 calculates the value of the rhyme control parameter from the symbolized rhyme information using a rule and a table. In this case, as the rhyme control parameter, duration of the phoneme, pitch pattern, energy pattern, and rest period information are used. When the value of the rhyme control parameter is calculated by the rhyme processor 202, the signal processor 203 generates a synthesized sound using the data in the synthesis unit database 204 and the rhyme control parameter. That is, text information is converted into voice information and generated (step 302).

When the voice information is generated in this way, the control unit 109 stores the generated voice information in the memory 102 at the same address as the digital music file originally received (step 303). At this time, the voice information is stored first by the control program written by the designer of the multicodec player of the present invention, and the digital music file is stored later.

On the other hand, when the user wants to input any other information besides generating the text information stored together in the digital music file as voice information as described above, the user sends the information to the external microphone 113 or the built-in microphone 112. It is possible to record by voice using. When a voice signal is input through the external microphone 113 or the built-in microphone 112, the input voice signal is transmitted to the analog / digital converter 104, and the analog / digital converter 104 receives the input analog voice signal. Sampling at a predetermined frequency is converted into digital voice data and output. When the digital voice data is transmitted to the codec unit 103, the codec unit 103 compresses the received digital voice data and encodes the received digital voice data in a PCM method or an ADPCM method to convert the PCM data or the ADPCM data file. Then, the control unit 109 stores the converted file in the memory 102.

On the other hand, when the user (music listener) presses the play key (not shown) of the key control unit 106 to play the stored digital music file, the control unit 109 is stored in the memory 102 in response to the selection signal. Audio information and digital music files are read out and transmitted to the codec unit 103. Then, the codec unit 103 decompresses the received voice information and the digital music file, decodes the digital audio data, and outputs the decoded audio data. Then, the digital-to-analog converter 105 converts the decoded digital audio data provided from the codec unit 103 into an analog audio signal and outputs it (step 304). As a result, the user (music listener) can finally listen to digital music through a separate speaker (not shown) connected through the earphone 116 or the line output jack 115. At this time, when digital music is output through the earphone 116 or a separate speaker, the voiced information of the text information related to the digital music is also output. The voice information is first output, and then the digital music is output. Here, although the digital music may be output after the audio information is output in this manner, the digital music is first output by slightly changing the design of the control program by the designer of the control program controlling the operation of the multicodec player of the present invention. The voice information may be output later, or the voice information may be output while digital music is output.

By the above, the user (music listener) can listen to digital music while listening to the textual information related to the music (song title, singer name, song lyrics, brief description of the song, etc.).

As described above, although the present invention has been described by means of a limited embodiment and drawings, the present invention is not limited to the above, and the person of ordinary skill in the art to which the present invention pertains should have Of course, various modifications and variations are possible within the scope of the claims.

As described above, the multi-codec player having the text / voice conversion function according to the present invention converts not only the digital music but also text information related to the music to the voice when the digital music is played, so that the user (listener) plays the music. As you listen to music, you can listen to music-related information (song titles, singer names, song lyrics, brief descriptions of the song, etc.), which can help you broaden your understanding of the music and take another dimension to listening to music. I can feel the zest.

Claims (2)

In the multi-codec player having a control unit, a memory, a codec unit, an analog-to-digital converter, and a digital-to-analog converter, The memory program includes a control program that converts and stores text information related to music stored in a digital music file into voice using a text / voice conversion program, and also plays back voice conversion information of the text information during digital music playback. A multicodec player with text to speech conversion, characterized in that it is stored. The method of claim 1, And the voice conversion information of the text information includes at least one of a song title, a singer's name, song lyrics, and a brief description of the song.