Source-Filter Separation for Articulation-to-Speech Synthesis

In this paper we examine a method for separating out the vocal-tract filter response from the voice source characteristic using a large articulatory database. The method realises such separation for voiced speech using an iterative approximation procedure under the assumption that the speech production process is a linear system composed of a voice source and a vocal-tract filter, and that each of the components is controlled independently by different sets of factors. Experimental results show that the spectral variation is evidently influenced by the fundamental frequency or the power of speech, and that the tendency of the variation may be related closely to speaker identity. The method enables independent control over the voice source characteristic in our articulation-to-speech synthesis.