Pitch Shifting of Arabic Speech Signal by Source Filter Modelling for Prosodic Transformations

This paper proposes a pitch shifting technique based on the use of Source Filter Model (SFM) by Linear Prediction. A complete solution is described, included estimation of model parameters, pitch detection, Unvoiced/Voiced (U/V) classification and speech synthesis at several pitch values. An automatic U/V classification is proposed using two methods, the Autocorrelation by thresholding and the Zero Crossing Rate (ZCR) versus Energy computation. The satisfactory performance of this technique is evaluated by listening tests using sentences in Standard Arabic Language. The limit range of pitch shifting for a clear speech synthesizing is found.

[1]  G. G. Stokes.  "J." , 1890, The New Yale Book of Quotations.

[2]  A. Noll.  Cepstrum pitch determination. , 1967, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[3]  J. Markel,et al.  The SIFT algorithm for fundamental frequency estimation , 1972 .

[4]  M. Ross,et al.  Average magnitude difference function pitch extractor , 1974 .

[5]  N. Miller.  Pitch detection by data reduction , 1975 .

[6]  M. J. Cheng,et al.  Comparative performance study of several pitch detection algorithms , 1975 .

[7]  Sadaoki Furui,et al.  Digital Speech Processing, Synthesis, and Recognition , 1989 .

[8]  A. Syrdal,et al.  Applied speech technology , 1995 .

[9]  D. Kahn,et al.  Pitch modification of speech using a low-sensitivity inverse filter approach , 1998, IEEE Signal Processing Letters.

[10]  Xuejing Sun,et al.  Voice quality conversion in TD-PSOLA speech synthesis , 2000, 2000 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing. Proceedings (Cat. No.00CH37100).

[11]  Alex Acero,et al.  Spoken Language Processing: A Guide to Theory, Algorithm and System Development , 2001 .

[12]  Wai C. Chu,et al.  Speech Coding Algorithms: Foundation and Evolution of Standardized Coders , 2003 .

[13]  Xin Xu,et al.  A robust pitch detection in noisy speech with band-pass filtering on modulation spectra , 2005, IEEE International Symposium on Communications and Information Technology, 2005. ISCIT 2005..

[14]  Hui Li,et al.  A Pitch Detection Algorithm Based on AMDF and ACF , 2006, 2006 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics Speech and Signal Processing Proceedings.

[15]  Zhenmin Tang,et al.  A Method Combining LPC-Based Cepstrum and Harmonic Product Spectrum for Pitch Detection , 2006, 2006 International Conference on Intelligent Information Hiding and Multimedia.