A modulation property of time-frequency derivatives of filtered phase and its application to aperiodicity and fo estimation

We introduce a simple and linear SNR (strictly speaking, periodic to random power ratio) estimator (0dB to 80dB without additional calibration/linearization) for providing reliable descriptions of aperiodicity in speech corpus. The main idea of this method is to estimate the background random noise level without directly extracting the background noise. The proposed method is applicable to a wide variety of time windowing functions with very low sidelobe levels. The estimate combines the frequency derivative and the time-frequency derivative of the mapping from filter center frequency to the output instantaneous frequency. This procedure can replace the periodicity detection and aperiodicity estimation subsystems of recently introduced open source vocoder, YANG vocoder. Source code of MATLAB implementation of this method will also be open sourced.Comment: 8 pages 9 figures, Submitted and accepted in Interspeech201

Reconstruction of Phonated Speech from Whispers Using Formant-Derived Plausible Pitch Modulation

Whispering is a natural, unphonated, secondary aspect of speech communications for most people. However, it is the primary mechanism of communications for some speakers who have impaired voice production mechanisms, such as partial laryngectomees, as well as for those prescribed voice rest, which often follows surgery or damage to the larynx. Unlike most people, who choose when to whisper and when not to, these speakers may have little choice but to rely on whispers for much of their daily vocal interaction. Even though most speakers will whisper at times, and some speakers can only whisper, the majority of today’s computational speech technology systems assume or require phonated speech. This article considers conversion of whispers into natural-sounding phonated speech as a noninvasive prosthetic aid for people with voice impairments who can only whisper. As a by-product, the technique is also useful for unimpaired speakers who choose to whisper. Speech reconstruction systems can be classified into those requiring training and those that do not. Among the latter, a recent parametric reconstruction framework is explored and then enhanced through a refined estimation of plausible pitch from weighted formant differences. The improved reconstruction framework, with proposed formant-derived artificial pitch modulation, is validated through subjective and objective comparison tests alongside state-of-the-art alternatives