All-pole model estimation of vocal tract on the frequency domain

Probably the most powerful method for speech analysis is the linear prediction analysis, or LPC analysis, one of its main characteristics being the estimation of time-domain related parameters from time-domain samples. This paper proposes a novel speech analysis framework for estimating the spectral poles directly from spectral samples in voiced speech utterances. The method can be described in plain words as the task of fitting the spectral envelope of an allpole model directly on the log energy of the harmonics. This problem is addressed with an analysis-by-synthesis mechanism supported on a Newton-Raphson algorithm of fast convergence. The proposed method differs clearly from previous approaches commonly used in Harmonic or Sinusoidal Coding. Comparative results on synthetic signals show the excellent performance of the novel analysis technique.