Excitation Codebook Design for Coding of the Singing Voice

The technique of Code Excited Linear Prediction (CELP) has led to the development of voice coding systems that provide toll quality speech at very low bitrates. While speech and singing share many similarities in terms of production, standard speech coding implementations fall far short when transmitting the singing voice. This paper explores the reasons for this discrepancy and suggests new variations on CELP speech coders that specifically enhance the quality of encoded singing for individual singers. These modifications could be used in a low-bitrate singing voice codec which, in conjunction with multi-track structured coding schemes such as MPEG-4 Structured Audio, could provide a highly compressed yet high-quality representation of a complex audio scene.