A preliminary demonstration of exemplar-based voice conversion for articulation disorders using an individuality-preserving dictionary

作者：Aihara Ryo^*; Takashima Ryoichi; Takiguchi Tetsuya; Ariki Yasuo

来源：EURASIP Journal on Audio Speech and Music Processing, 2014, 2014(1): 5.

DOI：10.1186/1687-4722-2014-5

• Voice conversion
• NMF
• Articulation disorders
• Voice reconstruction
• Assistive technologies

We present in this paper a voice conversion (VC) method for a person with an articulation disorder resulting from athetoid cerebral palsy. The movement of such speakers is limited by their athetoid symptoms, and their consonants are often unstable or unclear, which makes it difficult for them to communicate. In this paper, exemplar-based spectral conversion using nonnegative matrix factorization (NMF) is applied to a voice with an articulation disorder. To preserve the speaker's individuality, we used an individuality-preserving dictionary that is constructed from the source speaker's vowels and target speaker's consonants. Using this dictionary, we can create a natural and clear voice preserving their voice's individuality. Experimental results indicate that the performance of NMF-based VC is considerably better than conventional GMM-based VC.

• 出版日期2014-2-1