A 2000 BPS LPC vocoder based on multiband excitation

This paper presents an improved mixed LPC vocoder at 2000 bps using Multi-Band Excitation analysis by a synthesis algorithm. The new vocoder determines the voiced/unvoiced characteristics harmonic by harmonic in a frame, and finds the first voiced/unvoiced transition as the cut-off frequency, which is more accurate and efficient than traditional cut-off frequency detection. The synthetic speech below the cut-off frequency is excited by a series of voiced harmonics, while the signal above the cut-off frequency is simulated by a noise source. The final output speech is the sum of these two outputs. To increase the naturalness and clearness of the synthesized speech, this model applies phase prediction and spectral enhancement in the synthesizer. It is also possible to reduce the bit rate to 1200 bps. Informal listening tests indicate that the output speech possesses higher intelligibility and quality than that of the 2.4 kbps LPC-10e standard, and is comparable with the 4.8 kbps FS1016 CELP vocoder.published_or_final_versio

A robust low bit rate quad-band excitation LSP vocoder.

by Chiu Kim Ming.Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1994.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 103-108).Chapter Chapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.1Chapter 1.1 --- Speech production --- p.2Chapter 1.2 --- Low bit rate speech coding --- p.4Chapter Chapter 2 --- Speech analysis & synthesis --- p.8Chapter 2.1 --- Linear prediction of speech signal --- p.8Chapter 2.2 --- LPC vocoder --- p.11Chapter 2.2.1 --- Pitch and voiced/unvoiced decision --- p.11Chapter 2.2.2 --- Spectral envelope representation --- p.15Chapter 2.3 --- Excitation --- p.16Chapter 2.3.1 --- Regular pulse excitation and Multipulse excitation --- p.16Chapter 2.3.2 --- Coded excitation and vector sum excitation --- p.19Chapter 2.4 --- Multiband excitation --- p.22Chapter 2.5 --- Multiband excitation vocoder --- p.25Chapter Chapter 3 --- Dual-band and Quad-band excitation --- p.31Chapter 3.1 --- Dual-band excitation --- p.31Chapter 3.2 --- Quad-band excitation --- p.37Chapter 3.3 --- Parameters determination --- p.41Chapter 3.3.1 --- Pitch detection --- p.41Chapter 3.3.2 --- Voiced/unvoiced pattern generation --- p.43Chapter 3.4 --- Excitation generation --- p.47Chapter Chapter 4 --- A low bit rate Quad-Band Excitation LSP Vocoder --- p.51Chapter 4.1 --- Architecture of QBELSP vocoder --- p.51Chapter 4.2 --- Coding of excitation parameters --- p.58Chapter 4.2.1 --- Coding of pitch value --- p.58Chapter 4.2.2 --- Coding of voiced/unvoiced pattern --- p.60Chapter 4.3 --- Spectral envelope estimation and coding --- p.62Chapter 4.3.1 --- Spectral envelope & the gain value --- p.62Chapter 4.3.2 --- Line Spectral Pairs (LSP) --- p.63Chapter 4.3.3 --- Coding of LSP frequencies --- p.68Chapter 4.3.4 --- Coding of gain value --- p.77Chapter Chapter 5 --- Performance evaluation --- p.80Chapter 5.1 --- Spectral analysis --- p.80Chapter 5.2 --- Subjective listening test --- p.93Chapter 5.2.1 --- Mean Opinion Score (MOS) --- p.93Chapter 5.2.2 --- Diagnostic Rhyme Test (DRT) --- p.96Chapter Chapter 6 --- Conclusions and discussions --- p.99References --- p.103Appendix A Subroutine of pitch detection --- p.A-I - A-IIIAppendix B Subroutine of voiced/unvoiced decision --- p.B-I - B-VAppendix C Subroutine of LPC coefficients calculation using Durbin's recursive method --- p.C-I - C-IIAppendix D Subroutine of LSP calculation using Chebyshev Polynomials --- p.D-I - D-IIIAppendix E Single syllable word pairs for Diagnostic Rhyme Test --- p.E-

Wavenet based low rate speech coding

Traditional parametric coding of speech facilitates low rate but provides poor reconstruction quality because of the inadequacy of the model used. We describe how a WaveNet generative speech model can be used to generate high quality speech from the bit stream of a standard parametric coder operating at 2.4 kb/s. We compare this parametric coder with a waveform coder based on the same generative model and show that approximating the signal waveform incurs a large rate penalty. Our experiments confirm the high performance of the WaveNet based coder and show that the speech produced by the system is able to additionally perform implicit bandwidth extension and does not significantly impair recognition of the original speaker for the human listener, even when that speaker has not been used during the training of the generative model.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure

DeepVoCoder: A CNN model for compression and coding of narrow band speech

This paper proposes a convolutional neural network (CNN)-based encoder model to compress and code speech signal directly from raw input speech. Although the model can synthesize wideband speech by implicit bandwidth extension, narrowband is preferred for IP telephony and telecommunications purposes. The model takes time domain speech samples as inputs and encodes them using a cascade of convolutional filters in multiple layers, where pooling is applied after some layers to downsample the encoded speech by half. The final bottleneck layer of the CNN encoder provides an abstract and compact representation of the speech signal. In this paper, it is demonstrated that this compact representation is sufficient to reconstruct the original speech signal in high quality using the CNN decoder. This paper also discusses the theoretical background of why and how CNN may be used for end-to-end speech compression and coding. The complexity, delay, memory requirements, and bit rate versus quality are discussed in the experimental results.Web of Science7750897508

Non-intrusive identification of speech codecs in digital audio signals

Speech compression has become an integral component in all modern telecommunications networks. Numerous codecs have been developed and deployed for efficiently transmitting voice signals while maintaining high perceptual quality. Because of the diversity of speech codecs used by different carriers and networks, the ability to distinguish between different codecs lends itself to a wide variety of practical applications, including determining call provenance, enhancing network diagnostic metrics, and improving automated speaker recognition. However, few research efforts have attempted to provide a methodology for identifying amongst speech codecs in an audio signal. In this research, we demonstrate a novel approach for accurately determining the presence of several contemporary speech codecs in a non-intrusive manner. The methodology developed in this research demonstrates techniques for analyzing an audio signal such that the subtle noise components introduced by the codec processing are accentuated while most of the original speech content is eliminated. Using these techniques, an audio signal may be profiled to gather a set of values that effectively characterize the codec present in the signal. This procedure is first applied to a large data set of audio signals from known codecs to develop a set of trained profiles. Thereafter, signals from unknown codecs may be similarly profiled, and the profiles compared to each of the known training profiles in order to decide which codec is the best match with the unknown signal. Overall, the proposed strategy generates extremely favorable results, with codecs being identified correctly in nearly 95% of all test signals. In addition, the profiling process is shown to require a very short analysis length of less than 4 seconds of audio to achieve these results. Both the identification rate and the small analysis window represent dramatic improvements over previous efforts in speech codec identification

Comparison of Wideband Earpiece Integrations in Mobile Phone

Perinteisesti puhelinverkoissa välitettävä puhe on ollut kapeakaistaista, kaistan ollessa 300 - 3400 Hz. Voidaan kuitenkin olettaa, että laajakaistaiset puhepalvelut tulevat saamaan markkinoilla enemmän jalansijaa tulevina vuosina. Tässä lopputyössä esitellään puheenkoodauksen perusteet laajakaistaisen adaptiivisen moninopeuspuhekoodekin (AMR-WB) kanssa. Laajakaistainen puhekoodekki laajentaa puhekaistan 50-7000 Hz käyttäen 16 kHz näytetaajuutta. Käytännössä laajempi kaista tarkoittaa parannuksia puheen ymmärrettävyyteen ja tekee siitä luonnollisemman ja mukavamman kuuloista. Tämän lopputyön päätavoite on vertailla kahden eri laajakaistaisen matkapuhelinkuulokkeen integrointia. Kysymys kuuluu, kuinka paljon käyttäjä hyötyy isommasta kuulokkeesta matkapuhelimessa? Kuulokkeiden suorituskyvyn selvittämiseksi niille tehtiin objektiivisia mittauksia vapaakentässä. Mittauksia tehtiin myös puhelimelle pää- ja torsosimulaattorissa (HATS) johdottamalla kuuloke suoraan vahvistimelle, sekä lisäksi puhelun ollessa aktiivisena GSM ja WCDMA verkoissa. Objektiiviset mittaukset osoittivat kahden eri integroinnin väliset erot kuulokkeiden taajuusvasteessa ja särössä erityisesti matalilla taajuuksilla. Lopuksi tehtiin kuuntelukoe tarkoituksena selvittää erottaako loppukäyttäjä pienemmän ja isomman kuulokkeen välistä eroa käyttäen kapeakaistaisia ja laajakaistaisia puhelinääninäytteitä. Kuuntelukokeen tuloksien pohjalta voidaan sanoa, että käyttäjä erottaa kahden eri integroinnin erot ja miespuhuja hyötyy naispuhujaa enemmän isommasta kuulokkeesta laajakaistaisella puhekoodekilla.The speech in telecommunication networks has been traditionally narrowband ranging from 300 Hz to 3400 Hz. It can be expected that wideband speech call services will increase their foothold in the markets during the coming years. In this thesis speech coding basics with adaptive multirate wideband (AMR-WB) are introduced. The wideband codec widens the speech band to new range from 50 Hz to 7000 Hz using 16 kHz sampling frequency. In practice the wider band means improvements to speech intelligibility and makes it more natural and comfortable to listen to. The main focus of this thesis work is to compare two different wideband earpiece integrations. The question is how much the end-user will benefit from using a larger earpiece in a mobile phone? To find out speaker performance, objective measurements in free field were done for the earpiece modules. Measurements were performed also for the phone on head and torso simulator (HATS) by wiring the earpieces directly to a power amplifier and with over the air on GSM and WCDMA networks. The results of objective measurements showed differences between the earpiece integrations especially on low frequencies in frequency response and distortion. Finally the subjective listening test is done for comparison to see if the end-user notices the difference between smaller and larger earpiece integrations using narrowband and wideband speech samples. Based on these subjective test results it can be said that the user can differentiate between two different integrations and that a male speaker benefits more from a larger earpiece than a female speaker

Speech synthesis using Mel-Cepstral coefficient feature

This thesis presents a method to improve quality of synthesized speech by reducing the vocoded effect. The synthesis model takes mel-cepstral coefficients and spectrum envelopes as features of the original speech waveform. Mel-cepstral coefficients could be used to generate natural sounding voice and reduce the artificial effect. Compared to regular linear predictive coding (LPC) coefficient which is also widely used in speech synthesis, the mel-cepstral coefficient could resemble the human voice more closely by providing the synthesized speech with more details in the low frequency band. The model uses a synthesis filter to estimate the log spectrum including both zeros and poles in the transfer function, along with the mixed excitation technique which could divide speech signals into multiple frequency bands to better approximate natural speech production.Ope

Noise-Robust Voice Conversion

A persistent challenge in speech processing is the presence of noise that reduces the quality of speech signals. Whether natural speech is used as input or speech is the desirable output to be synthesized, noise degrades the performance of these systems and causes output speech to be unnatural. Speech enhancement deals with such a problem, typically seeking to improve the input speech or post-processes the (re)synthesized speech. An intriguing complement to post-processing speech signals is voice conversion, in which speech by one person (source speaker) is made to sound as if spoken by a different person (target speaker). Traditionally, the majority of speech enhancement and voice conversion methods rely on parametric modeling of speech. A promising complement to parametric models is an inventory-based approach, which is the focus of this work. In inventory-based speech systems, one records an inventory of clean speech signals as a reference. Noisy speech (in the case of enhancement) or target speech (in the case of conversion) can then be replaced by the best-matching clean speech in the inventory, which is found via a correlation search method. Such an approach has the potential to alleviate intelligibility and unnaturalness issues often encountered by parametric modeling speech processing systems. This work investigates and compares inventory-based speech enhancement methods with conventional ones. In addition, the inventory search method is applied to estimate source speaker characteristics for voice conversion in noisy environments. Two noisy-environment voice conversion systems were constructed for a comparative study: a direct voice conversion system and an inventory-based voice conversion system, both with limited noise filtering at the front end. Results from this work suggest that the inventory method offers encouraging improvements over the direct conversion method