IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Information
A Hybrid Approach to Electrolaryngeal Speech Enhancement Based on Noise Reduction and Statistical Excitation Generation
Summary :
This paper presents an electrolaryngeal (EL) speech enhancement method capable of significantly improving naturalness of EL speech while causing no degradation in its intelligibility. An electrolarynx is an external device that artificially generates excitation sounds to enable laryngectomees to produce EL speech. Although proficient laryngectomees can produce quite intelligible EL speech, it sounds very unnatural due to the mechanical excitation produced by the device. Moreover, the excitation sounds produced by the device often leak outside, adding to EL speech as noise. To address these issues, there are mainly two conventional approached to EL speech enhancement through either noise reduction or statistical voice conversion (VC). The former approach usually causes no degradation in intelligibility but yields only small improvements in naturalness as the mechanical excitation sounds remain essentially unchanged. On the other hand, the latter approach significantly improves naturalness of EL speech using spectral and excitation parameters of natural voices converted from acoustic parameters of EL speech, but it usually causes degradation in intelligibility owing to errors in conversion. We propose a hybrid approach using a noise reduction method for enhancing spectral parameters and statistical voice conversion method for predicting excitation parameters. Moreover, we further modify the prediction process of the excitation parameters to improve its prediction accuracy and reduce adverse effects caused by unvoiced/voiced prediction errors. The experimental results demonstrate the proposed method yields significant improvements in naturalness compared with EL speech while keeping intelligibility high enough.
- Publication
- IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Information Vol.E97-D No.6 pp.1429-1437
- Publication Date
- 2014/06/01
- Publicized
- Online ISSN
- 1745-1361
- DOI
- 10.1587/transinf.E97.D.1429
- Type of Manuscript
- Special Section PAPER (Special Section on Advances in Modeling for Real-world Speech Information Processing and its Application)
- Category
- Voice Conversion and Speech Enhancement
Authors
Kou TANAKA
Nara Institute of Science and Technology (NAIST)
Tomoki TODA
Nara Institute of Science and Technology (NAIST)
Graham NEUBIG
Nara Institute of Science and Technology (NAIST)
Sakriani SAKTI
Nara Institute of Science and Technology (NAIST)
Satoshi NAKAMURA
Nara Institute of Science and Technology (NAIST)
Keyword
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Kou TANAKA, Tomoki TODA, Graham NEUBIG, Sakriani SAKTI, Satoshi NAKAMURA, "A Hybrid Approach to Electrolaryngeal Speech Enhancement Based on Noise Reduction and Statistical Excitation Generation" in IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Information,
vol. E97-D, no. 6, pp. 1429-1437, June 2014, doi: 10.1587/transinf.E97.D.1429.
Abstract: This paper presents an electrolaryngeal (EL) speech enhancement method capable of significantly improving naturalness of EL speech while causing no degradation in its intelligibility. An electrolarynx is an external device that artificially generates excitation sounds to enable laryngectomees to produce EL speech. Although proficient laryngectomees can produce quite intelligible EL speech, it sounds very unnatural due to the mechanical excitation produced by the device. Moreover, the excitation sounds produced by the device often leak outside, adding to EL speech as noise. To address these issues, there are mainly two conventional approached to EL speech enhancement through either noise reduction or statistical voice conversion (VC). The former approach usually causes no degradation in intelligibility but yields only small improvements in naturalness as the mechanical excitation sounds remain essentially unchanged. On the other hand, the latter approach significantly improves naturalness of EL speech using spectral and excitation parameters of natural voices converted from acoustic parameters of EL speech, but it usually causes degradation in intelligibility owing to errors in conversion. We propose a hybrid approach using a noise reduction method for enhancing spectral parameters and statistical voice conversion method for predicting excitation parameters. Moreover, we further modify the prediction process of the excitation parameters to improve its prediction accuracy and reduce adverse effects caused by unvoiced/voiced prediction errors. The experimental results demonstrate the proposed method yields significant improvements in naturalness compared with EL speech while keeping intelligibility high enough.
URL: https://global.ieice.org/en_transactions/information/10.1587/transinf.E97.D.1429/_p
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@ARTICLE{e97-d_6_1429,
author={Kou TANAKA, Tomoki TODA, Graham NEUBIG, Sakriani SAKTI, Satoshi NAKAMURA, },
journal={IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Information},
title={A Hybrid Approach to Electrolaryngeal Speech Enhancement Based on Noise Reduction and Statistical Excitation Generation},
year={2014},
volume={E97-D},
number={6},
pages={1429-1437},
abstract={This paper presents an electrolaryngeal (EL) speech enhancement method capable of significantly improving naturalness of EL speech while causing no degradation in its intelligibility. An electrolarynx is an external device that artificially generates excitation sounds to enable laryngectomees to produce EL speech. Although proficient laryngectomees can produce quite intelligible EL speech, it sounds very unnatural due to the mechanical excitation produced by the device. Moreover, the excitation sounds produced by the device often leak outside, adding to EL speech as noise. To address these issues, there are mainly two conventional approached to EL speech enhancement through either noise reduction or statistical voice conversion (VC). The former approach usually causes no degradation in intelligibility but yields only small improvements in naturalness as the mechanical excitation sounds remain essentially unchanged. On the other hand, the latter approach significantly improves naturalness of EL speech using spectral and excitation parameters of natural voices converted from acoustic parameters of EL speech, but it usually causes degradation in intelligibility owing to errors in conversion. We propose a hybrid approach using a noise reduction method for enhancing spectral parameters and statistical voice conversion method for predicting excitation parameters. Moreover, we further modify the prediction process of the excitation parameters to improve its prediction accuracy and reduce adverse effects caused by unvoiced/voiced prediction errors. The experimental results demonstrate the proposed method yields significant improvements in naturalness compared with EL speech while keeping intelligibility high enough.},
keywords={},
doi={10.1587/transinf.E97.D.1429},
ISSN={1745-1361},
month={June},}
Copy
TY - JOUR
TI - A Hybrid Approach to Electrolaryngeal Speech Enhancement Based on Noise Reduction and Statistical Excitation Generation
T2 - IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Information
SP - 1429
EP - 1437
AU - Kou TANAKA
AU - Tomoki TODA
AU - Graham NEUBIG
AU - Sakriani SAKTI
AU - Satoshi NAKAMURA
PY - 2014
DO - 10.1587/transinf.E97.D.1429
JO - IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Information
SN - 1745-1361
VL - E97-D
IS - 6
JA - IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Information
Y1 - June 2014
AB - This paper presents an electrolaryngeal (EL) speech enhancement method capable of significantly improving naturalness of EL speech while causing no degradation in its intelligibility. An electrolarynx is an external device that artificially generates excitation sounds to enable laryngectomees to produce EL speech. Although proficient laryngectomees can produce quite intelligible EL speech, it sounds very unnatural due to the mechanical excitation produced by the device. Moreover, the excitation sounds produced by the device often leak outside, adding to EL speech as noise. To address these issues, there are mainly two conventional approached to EL speech enhancement through either noise reduction or statistical voice conversion (VC). The former approach usually causes no degradation in intelligibility but yields only small improvements in naturalness as the mechanical excitation sounds remain essentially unchanged. On the other hand, the latter approach significantly improves naturalness of EL speech using spectral and excitation parameters of natural voices converted from acoustic parameters of EL speech, but it usually causes degradation in intelligibility owing to errors in conversion. We propose a hybrid approach using a noise reduction method for enhancing spectral parameters and statistical voice conversion method for predicting excitation parameters. Moreover, we further modify the prediction process of the excitation parameters to improve its prediction accuracy and reduce adverse effects caused by unvoiced/voiced prediction errors. The experimental results demonstrate the proposed method yields significant improvements in naturalness compared with EL speech while keeping intelligibility high enough.
ER -
English
