research-article

Reconstruction of Phonated Speech from Whispers Using Formant-Derived Plausible Pitch Modulation

Authors:

Ian V. Mcloughlin,

Hamid Reza Sharifzadeh,

Yan SongAuthors Info & Claims

ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing (TACCESS), Volume 6, Issue 4

Article No.: 12, Pages 1 - 21

https://doi.org/10.1145/2737724

Published: 11 May 2015 Publication History

Abstract

Whispering is a natural, unphonated, secondary aspect of speech communications for most people. However, it is the primary mechanism of communications for some speakers who have impaired voice production mechanisms, such as partial laryngectomees, as well as for those prescribed voice rest, which often follows surgery or damage to the larynx. Unlike most people, who choose when to whisper and when not to, these speakers may have little choice but to rely on whispers for much of their daily vocal interaction.

Even though most speakers will whisper at times, and some speakers can only whisper, the majority of today’s computational speech technology systems assume or require phonated speech. This article considers conversion of whispers into natural-sounding phonated speech as a noninvasive prosthetic aid for people with voice impairments who can only whisper. As a by-product, the technique is also useful for unimpaired speakers who choose to whisper.

Speech reconstruction systems can be classified into those requiring training and those that do not. Among the latter, a recent parametric reconstruction framework is explored and then enhanced through a refined estimation of plausible pitch from weighted formant differences. The improved reconstruction framework, with proposed formant-derived artificial pitch modulation, is validated through subjective and objective comparison tests alongside state-of-the-art alternatives.

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Cited By

Silva JOliveira MFerreira A(2021)Flexible parametric implantation of voicing in whispered speech under scarce training data2020 28th European Signal Processing Conference (EUSIPCO)10.23919/Eusipco47968.2020.9287684(416-420)Online publication date: 24-Jan-2021
https://doi.org/10.23919/Eusipco47968.2020.9287684
Khoria KKamble MPatil H(2021)Teager Energy Cepstral Coefficients for Classification of Normal vs. Whisper Speech2020 28th European Signal Processing Conference (EUSIPCO)10.23919/Eusipco47968.2020.9287634(1-5)Online publication date: 24-Jan-2021
https://doi.org/10.23919/Eusipco47968.2020.9287634
Patel MPurohit MShah JPatil H(2021) CinC-GAN for Effective F 0 prediction for Whisper-to-Normal Speech Conversion 2020 28th European Signal Processing Conference (EUSIPCO)10.23919/Eusipco47968.2020.9287385(411-415)Online publication date: 24-Jan-2021
https://doi.org/10.23919/Eusipco47968.2020.9287385
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Reconstruction of Phonated Speech from Whispers Using Formant-Derived Plausible Pitch Modulation
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Human computer interaction (HCI)

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Published In

cover image ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing

ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing Volume 6, Issue 4

Special Issue on Speech and Language Processing for AT (Part 2)

June 2015

76 pages

ISSN:1936-7228

EISSN:1936-7236

DOI:10.1145/2775084

Editors:
Matt Huenerfauth
Rochester Institute of Technology, USA
,
Kathleen F. McCoy
University of Delaware, USA

Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2015 ACM.

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 11 May 2015

Accepted: 01 February 2015

Revised: 01 February 2015

Received: 01 April 2014

Published in TACCESS Volume 6, Issue 4

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National Natural Science Foundation of China

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Cited By

Silva JOliveira MFerreira A(2021)Flexible parametric implantation of voicing in whispered speech under scarce training data2020 28th European Signal Processing Conference (EUSIPCO)10.23919/Eusipco47968.2020.9287684(416-420)Online publication date: 24-Jan-2021
https://doi.org/10.23919/Eusipco47968.2020.9287684
Khoria KKamble MPatil H(2021)Teager Energy Cepstral Coefficients for Classification of Normal vs. Whisper Speech2020 28th European Signal Processing Conference (EUSIPCO)10.23919/Eusipco47968.2020.9287634(1-5)Online publication date: 24-Jan-2021
https://doi.org/10.23919/Eusipco47968.2020.9287634
Patel MPurohit MShah JPatil H(2021) CinC-GAN for Effective F 0 prediction for Whisper-to-Normal Speech Conversion 2020 28th European Signal Processing Conference (EUSIPCO)10.23919/Eusipco47968.2020.9287385(411-415)Online publication date: 24-Jan-2021
https://doi.org/10.23919/Eusipco47968.2020.9287385
Sabaee MSharifzadeh HArdekani IAllen J(2021)Measurement of Formant Frequency in /hVd/ Words of Distorted Speech in Adult New Zealanders2021 IEEE Region 10 Symposium (TENSYMP)10.1109/TENSYMP52854.2021.9550969(1-6)Online publication date: 23-Aug-2021
https://doi.org/10.1109/TENSYMP52854.2021.9550969
Reshma CMohan AKaruppath N(2021)Rectification of impaired whisper speech signals2021 International Conference on Recent Trends on Electronics, Information, Communication & Technology (RTEICT)10.1109/RTEICT52294.2021.9573835(543-549)Online publication date: 27-Aug-2021
https://doi.org/10.1109/RTEICT52294.2021.9573835
Parmar MDoshi SShah NPatel MPatil H(2019)Effectiveness of Cross-Domain Architectures for Whisper-to-Normal Speech Conversion2019 27th European Signal Processing Conference (EUSIPCO)10.23919/EUSIPCO.2019.8902961(1-5)Online publication date: Sep-2019
https://doi.org/10.23919/EUSIPCO.2019.8902961
Yu WLian HZhou JWang HTao L(2019)Whispered Speech to Normal Speech Conversion Using Bidirectional LSTMs with Meta-network2019 IEEE 2nd International Conference on Information Communication and Signal Processing (ICICSP)10.1109/ICICSP48821.2019.8958537(251-255)Online publication date: Sep-2019
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICICSP48821.2019.8958537
Naini ARao MV AGhosh P(2019)Formant-gaps Features for Speaker Verification Using Whispered SpeechICASSP 2019 - 2019 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP)10.1109/ICASSP.2019.8682571(6231-6235)Online publication date: May-2019
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICASSP.2019.8682571
Lian HHu YYu WZhou JZheng W(2019)Whisper to Normal Speech Conversion Using Sequence-to-Sequence Mapping Model With Auditory AttentionIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2019.29407007(130495-130504)Online publication date: 2019
https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2019.2940700
G. NGhosh P(2018)Reconstruction of articulatory movements during neutral speech from those during whispered speechThe Journal of the Acoustical Society of America10.1121/1.5039750143:6(3352-3364)Online publication date: 6-Jun-2018
https://doi.org/10.1121/1.5039750
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