Mixed source model and its adapted vocal tract filter estimate for voice transformation and synthesis

cote interne IRCAM: Degottex13aNone / NoneNational audienceIn current methods for voice transformation and speech synthesis, the vocal tract filter is usually assumed to be excited by a flat ampli- tude spectrum. In this article, we present a method using a mixed source model defined as a mixture of the Liljencrants–Fant (LF) model and Gaussian noise. Using the LF model, the base approach used in this presented work is therefore close to a vocoder using exogenous input like ARX-based methods or the Glottal Spectral Separation (GSS) method. Such approaches are therefore dedicated to voice pro- cessing promising an improved naturalness compared to generic signal models. To estimate the Vocal Tract Filter (VTF), using spectral division like in GSS, we show that a glottal source model can be used with any envelope estimation method conversely to ARX approach where a least square AR solution is used. We therefore derive a VTF estimate which takes into account the amplitude spectra of both deterministic and random components of the glottal source. The proposed mixed source model is controlled by a small set of intuitive and independent parameters. The relevance of this voice production model is evaluated, through listening tests, in the context of resyn- thesis, HMM-based speech synthesis, breathiness modification and pitch transposition