Blizzard Challenge 2007 Rules

DATABASE ACCESS

 * You will receive a separate message about how to download this

REGISTRATION FEE

 * A registration fee of 500USD is due to offset the costs of running
   the challenge, including paying undergraduate listeners. This must
   be paid by the time you submit your test examples. You will
   receive separate instructions on how to pay this.

EXPERT LISTENERS

 * Each participant is expected to provide ten speech experts as
   listeners of the evaluation tests. English native speakers are
   preferable, where possible.

BUILDING VOICES

 * Each participant should build three synthetic voices from the
   database. It is permissible to submit fewer than three voices, but
   we strongly encourage you to complete the full challenge because
   this will be more informative.
 * It is not permissible for a single participant to submit multiple
   entries for any of the voices (because the listening test will
   become unmanageable).
 * All three voices should be built using the same method, software,
   external data, etc. For example, you are not allowed to use unit
   selection for voice A but a voice conversion method for voices B
   and C.
 * Voices to be built:
     Voice A: from the full dataset (about 8 hours)
     Voice B: from the ARCTIC subset (about 1 hour)
     Voice C: from a subset of the data chosen by you, under the
     following conditions:
     - you may only base your selection on the text (and not the
       speech, or any information such as labelling which has been
       derived with reference to the speech signal)
     - if your selection method requires phonetic, prosodic, or any
       other type of labelling, this must have been derived from the
       text only
     - you must select entire utterances
     - the total duration of the utterances you select must be no
       more than 2914 seconds (which is equal to the duration of the
       ARCTIC subset); you should use the officially provided
       durations file to make this calculation, which will be emailed
       to you.
 * If you use the provided database to train any parts of your system
   (e.g., a prosodic model or HMM parameters), then for voices B and
   C, you must not use the whole database to train those parts, but
   only the appropriate subset. See below for rules on using external
   data.

USE OF EXTERNAL DATA

 * "External data" is defined as data, of any type, that is not part
   of the provided database.
 * You are allowed to use external data. You must follow one of these
   two sets of rules (and the same one for all three voices):
     * Standard rules: You may use external data to construct these
         parts of your system:
           - text normalisation
           - lexicon & letter-to-sound
           - duration model
           - F0 model
           - aligner (i.e., any component used only to label the
             database, such as a set of HMMs used for forced alignment)
     * Voice conversion rules: You may use external data in any way
       you wish
* In essence, if there is any possibility that your system could sound
  like a different speaker than the database speaker, then your system
  should be classified as a voice conversion type of system.
* If you are in any doubt about how to apply these rules, please contact
  the organizers immediately.

SYNTHESISING THE TEST EXAMPLES

 * No manual intervention is allowed during synthesis. This includes,
   but is not limited to:
      * "Prompt sculpting"
      * Altering existing entries in your lexicon (however, you are
        allowed to add new words)
      * Using different subsets of the database for different test
        sentences or sentence types, unless this is a fully automatic
        part of your system

LISTENING TEST

 * We are not releasing details of the listening test design at this
   time, because you should not be tailoring your voice building to
   it. It will be largely similar to previous challenges, and you will
   need to synthesise several hundred sentences from text.
 * For voice conversion-type systems, there will be an additional
   component of the test, to judge how close the system sounds to the
   database speaker. If the listening test design allows, we will
   perform this test for all standard systems too.
 * Any examples that you submit for evaluation may be retained for
   future use. We hope to be able to distribute them in anonymised
   form to all participants, or publically.

PAPER

 * Each participant will be expected to submit a four-page paper
   describing their entry for review.
 * One of the authors of each accepted paper should present it at a
   satellite workshop of SSW6, on August 25, 2007 in Bonn, Germany
 * In addition, each participant will be expected to complete a form
   giving the general technical specification of their system, to
   facilitate easy cross-system comparisons (e.g. is it unit
   selection? does it predict prosody? etc. etc)

HOW ARE THESE RULES ENFORCED?

 * This is a challenge, which is designed to answer scientific
   questions, and not a competition. Therefore, we rely on your
   honesty in preparing your entry.