TTSBOX is a Matlab toolbox for teaching Text-to-Speech synthesis to undergraduate and graduate students. It was designed with the hope that it can help to increase the personal involvment of students in their TTS courses. I imagined it when teaching TTS in the EPFL post-graduate course in computer science "Language and Speech Engineering", and later involved my own graduate students at FPMs (Belgium) in its design.

TTSBOX performs the synthesis of Genglish (for "Generic English"), an imaginary language obtained by replacing English words by generic words. Genglish therefore has a rather limited lexicon, but its pronunciation maintains most of the problems encountered in natural languages. TTSBOX uses simple data-driven techniques (Bigrams, CARTs, NUUs) while trying to keep the code minimal, so as to keep it readable for students with reasonable MATLAB practice.

Text-to-Speech synthesis, however, is a complex combination of language processing, signal processing, and computer science. Students are therefore usually introduced to it in a top-down approach, emphasising problems to be solved and introducing solutions on paper, but with little real practice : designing a TTS takes too much time, and modifying one is usually impossible if you did not take part in its design (yet only if it was correctly documented). Apart from the FESTIVAL TTS system, which uses SCHEME as an interactive language for letting students play with TTS basics, no real "hands on" toolbox was available, especially for engineering students (who are most often familiar with MATLAB).