Novel speech duration modifier for packet based communication system

In this paper, we propose a real-time method for duration modification of speech for packet based communication system. While there is rich literature available on duration modification, it fails to clearly address the issues in real-time implementation of the same. Most of the duration modification methods rely on accurate estimation of pitch marks, which is not feasible in a real-time scenario. The proposed method modifies the duration of Linear Prediction residual of individual frames without using any look-ahead delay and knowledge of pitch marks. In this method, multiples of pitch period is repeated or removed from a frame depending on a scheduling algorithm. The subjective quality of the proposed method was found to be better than waveform similarity overlap and add (WSOLA) technique as well as Linear Prediction Pitch Synchronous Overlap and Add (LP-PSOLA) technique.