habilitation of the ability to speak in a
natural sounding voice, for patients who su?er larynx
and voice box de?ciencies, has long been a dream for
both patients and researchers working in this ?eld.
Removal of, or damage to, the voice box in a surgi-
cal operation such as laryngectomy, a?ects the pitch
generation mechanism of the human voice production
system. Such patients speech thus becomes hoarse,
whisper like and sometimes not easily perceptible.
This speech is obviously di?erent to that from nor-
mal speakers, and will have lost many of the distinc-
tive characteristics of the original speech. However,
these patients typically retain the ability to whisper
in a similar way to normal speaker
