55 research outputs found
Adversarially Trained Autoencoders for Parallel-Data-Free Voice Conversion
We present a method for converting the voices between a set of speakers. Our
method is based on training multiple autoencoder paths, where there is a single
speaker-independent encoder and multiple speaker-dependent decoders. The
autoencoders are trained with an addition of an adversarial loss which is
provided by an auxiliary classifier in order to guide the output of the encoder
to be speaker independent. The training of the model is unsupervised in the
sense that it does not require collecting the same utterances from the speakers
nor does it require time aligning over phonemes. Due to the use of a single
encoder, our method can generalize to converting the voice of out-of-training
speakers to speakers in the training dataset. We present subjective tests
corroborating the performance of our method
The Zero Resource Speech Challenge 2019: TTS without T
International audienceWe present the Zero Resource Speech Challenge 2019, which proposes to build a speech synthesizer without any text or pho-netic labels: hence, TTS without T (text-to-speech without text). We provide raw audio for a target voice in an unknown language (the Voice dataset), but no alignment, text or labels. Participants must discover subword units in an unsupervised way (using the Unit Discovery dataset) and align them to the voice recordings in a way that works best for the purpose of synthesizing novel utterances from novel speakers, similar to the target speaker's voice. We describe the metrics used for evaluation , a baseline system consisting of unsupervised subword unit discovery plus a standard TTS system, and a topline TTS using gold phoneme transcriptions. We present an overview of the 19 submitted systems from 10 teams and discuss the main results
Reimagining Speech: A Scoping Review of Deep Learning-Powered Voice Conversion
Research on deep learning-powered voice conversion (VC) in speech-to-speech
scenarios is getting increasingly popular. Although many of the works in the
field of voice conversion share a common global pipeline, there is a
considerable diversity in the underlying structures, methods, and neural
sub-blocks used across research efforts. Thus, obtaining a comprehensive
understanding of the reasons behind the choice of the different methods in the
voice conversion pipeline can be challenging, and the actual hurdles in the
proposed solutions are often unclear. To shed light on these aspects, this
paper presents a scoping review that explores the use of deep learning in
speech analysis, synthesis, and disentangled speech representation learning
within modern voice conversion systems. We screened 621 publications from more
than 38 different venues between the years 2017 and 2023, followed by an
in-depth review of a final database consisting of 123 eligible studies. Based
on the review, we summarise the most frequently used approaches to voice
conversion based on deep learning and highlight common pitfalls within the
community. Lastly, we condense the knowledge gathered, identify main challenges
and provide recommendations for future research directions
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