Dear research gate community,

for a new study I am looking for a tool or software that would allow me to manipulate formants (i.e. shift frequencies of F1, F2, and F3) and their transition (e.g., start or slope of transition) either within a synthesized CVC word or between two synthesized words. Therefore, it would be crucial to be able to control precisely where in the word or sequence formant manipulation starts and ends.

What I tried so far:

I already tried a tool written for Praat (Praat Vocal Toolkit) but it can only shift formants over the whole word and not for a specified time window.

Furthermore, I tried TrackDraw (https://github.com/guestdaniel/TrackDraw) which is a very good tool to synthesize vocalic sounds (Klatt Synthesizer) and manipulate their formants. However, CV sequences (and their vocalic transition) can not be generated.

I also used an online interface of the Klatt synthesizer (http://www.asel.udel.edu/speech/tutorials/synthesis/Klatt.html) but it is quite complex to even generate simple CV syllables and therefore not very user friendly for my purpose. Furthermore, I don't have reference values for the consonant parameters for German.

What I achieved so far:

I'm able to synthesize German words and phrases that sound quite natural with Python (text-to-speech synthesis).

What I'm looking for:

Ideally, I was hoping to find an application or tool that would allow for 1) language specific (in my case German) text-to-speech synthesis where 2) formants (and/or their transition) can be easily manipulated over time. Or a tool that already takes a synthesized sound as input and allows for formant manipulation.

If you have any ideas, recommendations, or comments I would be very obliged. Thank you!

Stella Krüger