Matti Karjalainen

Also known as Matti Antero Karjalainen

Matti Karjalainen was a Finnish speech and audio researcher who helped start speech technology research in Finland and built early speech synthesizers. After a 1978 doctorate on speech synthesis by rule at Tampere University of Technology, he created Synte 2 in 1979, the first portable text-to-speech synthesizer powered by a microprocessor. From 1980 to 2006 he headed the Acoustics Laboratory at Helsinki University of Technology, where his work spread into hearing models, spatial sound and neural network applications in speech and audio, and he supervised 24 doctoral theses, including those of Vesa Välimäki and Ville Pulkki. The Audio Engineering Society gave him its Silver Medal in 2006, and he became an IEEE Fellow in 2009. He died in Espoo in 2010, and Communication Acoustics, a textbook he wrote with Pulkki, appeared in 2015.

Born: 1946
Died: 2010
Works: 264
Citations: 6,483
h-index: 38
Badges: Founder
Loyal
Pioneer

Years link to their sources. Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 22 October 2026.

Timeline

1946–1974

Electronics studies at Tampere

He is born in April 1946 into a farming family in Hankasalmi, Finland, and builds pocket radios as a schoolboy. In 1965, he starts studying at Tampere University of Technology, where he studies electronics and earns a Licentiate in Technology in 1974.
1973–1978

A doctorate in speech synthesis

In August 1973, he and Unto Laine produce voice-like sounds from analog resonance circuits, and a grant from the Academy of Finland in 1974 starts speech technology research in Finland. By December 1974, their synthesizer asks the Academy for more funding in its own voice. He defends a dissertation on speech synthesis by rule in October 1978 and earns a Dr.Tech. with honors, advised by Boris Segerståhl.
1979–1981

The Synte 2 synthesizer

In 1979, he creates Synte 2, the first portable text-to-speech synthesizer powered by a microprocessor. With Unto Laine and R. O. Toivonen, he presents Synte 2-based aids for disabled people at ICASSP in 1980. Speech synthesis research in Tampere continues until 1981 and also produces the Synte 3 synthesizer.
1980–2006

Head of the HUT Acoustics Laboratory

He moves to Espoo in 1980 as an associate professor in the department of electrical engineering at Helsinki University of Technology, becomes a full professor in 1986, and heads its Acoustics Laboratory until 2006. Finding no signal analyzer able to measure the quality of synthetic speech, he builds computational models of the human ear and hearing and pursues psychoacoustics for the rest of his career. By the end of the 1990s, the laboratory has about 40 staff and three new professorships in speech and audio signal processing.
1990s

Spatial sound and a Palo Alto sabbatical

At the beginning of the 1990s, he starts research on modelling, recording and perceiving spatial sound, work that grows into two research groups. In 1995, he spends a sabbatical year in Palo Alto, strengthening his ties with Stanford University.
1995–2001

Doctoral students Välimäki and Pulkki

Vesa Välimäki earns his doctorate under him at Helsinki University of Technology in 1995 with a thesis on modelling acoustic tubes with fractional delay filters. Ville Pulkki completes his doctorate in 2001 at the TKK Acoustics Laboratory under his supervision. Across his career, he supervises 24 doctoral theses and over 100 master's theses.
1999–2009

AES and IEEE fellowships

He becomes an Audio Engineering Society Fellow in 1999 for contributions to audio signal processing and audio education. In May 2006, the society awards him its Silver Medal for scientific contributions in acoustics, auralization, digital signal processing and synthesis, at a time when his research interests include neural network applications in speech, audio and acoustics. In December 2009, he becomes an IEEE Fellow for his work on perceptual modelling of audio signals.
2006–2015

Karjalainen Fund and Communication Acoustics

He sets up the Matti Karjalainen Fund in 2006, at his 60th birthday, to support master's and doctoral studies and research in acoustics. He dies at his home in Espoo in May 2010 after a prolonged illness. His textbook with Ville Pulkki, Communication Acoustics: An Introduction to Speech, Audio and Psychoacoustics, appears from John Wiley & Sons in 2015.