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| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Preprint |
| Published: |
2025
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.17555 |
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| _version_ | 1866911279780724736 |
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| author | Wang, Guansu Sun, Peijie |
| author_facet | Wang, Guansu Sun, Peijie |
| contents | Recent advances in text-to-speech (TTS) have enabled models to clone arbitrary unseen speakers and synthesize high-quality, natural-sounding speech. However, evaluation methods lag behind: typical mean opinion score (MOS) estimators perform regression over entire utterances, while failures usually occur in a few problematic words. We observe that encoder-decoder ASR models (e.g., Whisper) surface word-level mismatches between speech and text via cross-attention, providing a fine-grained reward signal. Building on this, we introduce Word-level TTS Alignment by ASR-driven Attentive Reward (W3AR). Without explicit reward annotations, W3AR uses attention from a pre-trained ASR model to drive finer-grained alignment and optimization of sequences predicted by a TTS model. Experiments show that W3AR improves the quality of existing TTS systems and strengthens zero-shot robustness on unseen speakers. More broadly, our results suggest a simple recipe for generative modeling: understanding models can act as evaluators, delivering informative, fine-grained feedback for optimization. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_17555 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Speech Recognition Model Improves Text-to-Speech Synthesis using Fine-Grained Reward Wang, Guansu Sun, Peijie Audio and Speech Processing Computation and Language Recent advances in text-to-speech (TTS) have enabled models to clone arbitrary unseen speakers and synthesize high-quality, natural-sounding speech. However, evaluation methods lag behind: typical mean opinion score (MOS) estimators perform regression over entire utterances, while failures usually occur in a few problematic words. We observe that encoder-decoder ASR models (e.g., Whisper) surface word-level mismatches between speech and text via cross-attention, providing a fine-grained reward signal. Building on this, we introduce Word-level TTS Alignment by ASR-driven Attentive Reward (W3AR). Without explicit reward annotations, W3AR uses attention from a pre-trained ASR model to drive finer-grained alignment and optimization of sequences predicted by a TTS model. Experiments show that W3AR improves the quality of existing TTS systems and strengthens zero-shot robustness on unseen speakers. More broadly, our results suggest a simple recipe for generative modeling: understanding models can act as evaluators, delivering informative, fine-grained feedback for optimization. |
| title | Speech Recognition Model Improves Text-to-Speech Synthesis using Fine-Grained Reward |
| topic | Audio and Speech Processing Computation and Language |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.17555 |