In order to better understand and compare research techniques in building corpus-based speech synthesizers on the same data, the Blizzard Challenge has been devised.

The basic challenge is to take the released speech database, build a synthetic voice from the data and synthesize a prescribed set of test sentences. The sentences from each synthesizer will then be evaluated through listening tests.

Blizzard Challenge 2010 is current under development, and details will be presented before the end of December 2009. The Blizzard Challenge 2010 workshop will take place in conjunction with The ISCA 7th Speech Synthesis Workshop SSW7 in Japan, September 2010.

Results from previous Challenges:

• Blizzard Challenge 2009 papers and results
• Blizzard Challenge 2008 papers and results
• Blizzard Challenge 2007 papers and results
• Blizzard Challenge 2006 papers and results
• Blizzard Challenge 2005 papers and results

For further information please contact blizzard@festvox.org

Further description of the Challenge itself was published in Interspeech 2005 Eurospeech in Lisbon: http://www.festvox.org/blizzard/bc2005/IS051946.PDF