FastSpeech is a groundbreaking approach to text-to-speech (TTS) synthesis that significantly improves the speed and quality of speech generation using advanced machine learning techniques.
In traditional TTS systems, speech synthesis is often slow and lacks robustness and controllability. FastSpeech addresses these issues by employing a feed-forward network based on the Transformer architecture, which enables parallel computation for faster mel-spectrogram generation. This approach not only speeds up the synthesis process but also improves the quality and controllability of the generated speech.
Recent advancements in FastSpeech and its variants, such as FastSpeech 2 and MultiSpeech, have further enhanced the performance of TTS systems. FastSpeech 2 simplifies the training process and introduces more variation information of speech, such as pitch, energy, and more accurate duration, as conditional inputs. MultiSpeech, on the other hand, focuses on multi-speaker TTS, incorporating specially designed components to improve text-to-speech alignment.
Researchers have also explored methods to make FastSpeech more lightweight and efficient, such as LightSpeech, which uses neural architecture search (NAS) to automatically design more compact models. Additionally, data augmentation techniques like TTS-by-TTS have been proposed to improve the quality of non-autoregressive TTS systems when training data is limited.
Practical applications of FastSpeech and its variants include voice assistants, audiobook narration, and real-time language translation. Companies like Google and Amazon have already integrated advanced TTS systems into their products, enhancing user experience and accessibility.
In conclusion, FastSpeech and its related approaches have revolutionized the field of TTS synthesis, offering faster, higher-quality, and more controllable speech generation. As research continues to advance, we can expect even more improvements in TTS technology, making it more accessible and versatile for a wide range of applications.

FastSpeech
FastSpeech Further Reading
1.FastSpeech 2: Fast and High-Quality End-to-End Text to Speech http://arxiv.org/abs/2006.04558v8 Yi Ren, Chenxu Hu, Xu Tan, Tao Qin, Sheng Zhao, Zhou Zhao, Tie-Yan Liu2.Towards Natural and Controllable Cross-Lingual Voice Conversion Based on Neural TTS Model and Phonetic Posteriorgram http://arxiv.org/abs/2102.01991v1 Shengkui Zhao, Hao Wang, Trung Hieu Nguyen, Bin Ma3.LightSpeech: Lightweight and Fast Text to Speech with Neural Architecture Search http://arxiv.org/abs/2102.04040v1 Renqian Luo, Xu Tan, Rui Wang, Tao Qin, Jinzhu Li, Sheng Zhao, Enhong Chen, Tie-Yan Liu4.TTS-by-TTS: TTS-driven Data Augmentation for Fast and High-Quality Speech Synthesis http://arxiv.org/abs/2010.13421v1 Min-Jae Hwang, Ryuichi Yamamoto, Eunwoo Song, Jae-Min Kim5.Improving Prosody for Unseen Texts in Speech Synthesis by Utilizing Linguistic Information and Noisy Data http://arxiv.org/abs/2111.07549v1 Zhu Li, Yuqing Zhang, Mengxi Nie, Ming Yan, Mengnan He, Ruixiong Zhang, Caixia Gong6.FastSpeech: Fast, Robust and Controllable Text to Speech http://arxiv.org/abs/1905.09263v5 Yi Ren, Yangjun Ruan, Xu Tan, Tao Qin, Sheng Zhao, Zhou Zhao, Tie-Yan Liu7.MultiSpeech: Multi-Speaker Text to Speech with Transformer http://arxiv.org/abs/2006.04664v2 Mingjian Chen, Xu Tan, Yi Ren, Jin Xu, Hao Sun, Sheng Zhao, Tao Qin, Tie-Yan Liu8.PortaSpeech: Portable and High-Quality Generative Text-to-Speech http://arxiv.org/abs/2109.15166v5 Yi Ren, Jinglin Liu, Zhou Zhao9.GANSpeech: Adversarial Training for High-Fidelity Multi-Speaker Speech Synthesis http://arxiv.org/abs/2106.15153v1 Jinhyeok Yang, Jae-Sung Bae, Taejun Bak, Youngik Kim, Hoon-Young Cho10.JDI-T: Jointly trained Duration Informed Transformer for Text-To-Speech without Explicit Alignment http://arxiv.org/abs/2005.07799v3 Dan Lim, Won Jang, Gyeonghwan O, Heayoung Park, Bongwan Kim, Jaesam YoonFastSpeech Frequently Asked Questions
What is FastSpeech?
FastSpeech is a groundbreaking text-to-speech (TTS) synthesis approach that leverages advanced machine learning techniques to improve the speed, quality, and controllability of speech generation. It uses a feed-forward network based on the Transformer architecture, which enables parallel computation for faster mel-spectrogram generation. This results in a more efficient and higher-quality speech synthesis process compared to traditional TTS systems.
What is the difference between FastSpeech and FastSpeech 2?
FastSpeech 2 is an improved version of the original FastSpeech model. It simplifies the training process and introduces more variation information of speech, such as pitch, energy, and more accurate duration, as conditional inputs. This leads to better performance in terms of speech quality and naturalness compared to the original FastSpeech model.
How does FastSpeech improve the speed of speech synthesis?
FastSpeech employs a feed-forward network based on the Transformer architecture, which allows for parallel computation during the mel-spectrogram generation process. This parallelization significantly speeds up the synthesis process compared to traditional TTS systems that rely on autoregressive models, which generate speech sequentially and are therefore slower.
What is MultiSpeech and how does it relate to FastSpeech?
MultiSpeech is a variant of FastSpeech that focuses on multi-speaker TTS. It incorporates specially designed components to improve text-to-speech alignment, making it more suitable for generating speech from multiple speakers. This approach allows for better control over speaker identity and voice characteristics, making it a valuable addition to the FastSpeech family of models.
What are some practical applications of FastSpeech and its variants?
Practical applications of FastSpeech and its variants include voice assistants, audiobook narration, and real-time language translation. Companies like Google and Amazon have already integrated advanced TTS systems into their products, enhancing user experience and accessibility. As TTS technology continues to improve, we can expect even more applications to emerge in various industries.
How does LightSpeech contribute to the FastSpeech ecosystem?
LightSpeech is a lightweight and efficient variant of FastSpeech that uses neural architecture search (NAS) to automatically design more compact models. This approach results in smaller, faster, and more energy-efficient TTS models without sacrificing speech quality. LightSpeech is particularly useful for edge devices and applications where computational resources are limited.
What is TTS-by-TTS and how does it improve non-autoregressive TTS systems?
TTS-by-TTS is a data augmentation technique that has been proposed to improve the quality of non-autoregressive TTS systems, like FastSpeech, when training data is limited. It involves using a pre-trained TTS model to generate additional training data by synthesizing speech from the original text. This augmented data helps the model learn more effectively, leading to better performance and more natural-sounding speech synthesis.
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