FreeTTS - A Performance Case Study

The JavaTM platform has a stigma of being a poor performer and has often been shunned as an environment for developing speech engines. We decided to better understand this stigma by writing a speech synthesis engine entirely in the Java programming language. Remarkably, we were able to get better performance from our engine than one using similar algorithms written in C. Our team, composed of three engineers with significant backgrounds in the C and Java programming languages, also found it easier to make algorithm modifications using the Java programming language than using C. email addresses: [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] © 2002 Sun Microsystems, Inc.. All rights reserved. The SML Technical Report Series is published by Sun Microsystems Laboratories, of Sun Microsystems, Inc. Printed in U.S.A. Unlimited copying without fee is permitted provided that the copies are not made nor distributed for direct commercial advantage, and credit to the source is given. Otherwise, no part of this work covered by copyright hereon may be reproduced in any form or by any means graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or storage in an information retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner. TRADEMARKS Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun logo, the Solaris Operating Environment, Java, Java HotSpot, Java 2 Platform, JVM, Javadoc, and J2SE are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the U.S. and other countries. All SPARC trademarks are used under license and are trademarks or registered trademarks of SPARC International, Inc. in the U.S. and other countries. Products bearing SPARC trademarks are based upon an architecture developed by Sun Microsystems, Inc. UNIX is a registered trademark in the United States and other countries, exclusively licensed through X/Open Company, Ltd. For information regarding the SML Technical Report Series, contact Jeanie Treichel, Editor-in-Chief .All technical reports are available online on our Website, http://research.sun.com/techrep/. FreeTTS A Performance Case Study Willie Walker Paul Lamere Philip Kwok Sun Microsystems Laboratories Burlington, Massachusetts {William.Walker, Paul.Lamere, Philip.Kwok}@sun.com