Subband based voice conversion

A new voice conversion method that improves the quality of the voice conversion output at higher sampling rates is proposed. Speaker Transformation Algorithm Using Segmental Codebooks (STASC) is modified to process source and target speech spectra in different subbands. The new method ensures better conversion at sampling rates above 16KHz. Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) is employed for subband decomposition to estimate the speech spectrum better with higher resolution. Faster voice conversion is achieved since the computational complexity decreases at a lower sampling rate. A Voice Conversion System (VCS) is implemented using the proposed algorithm with necessary tools. The performance of the proposed method is demonstrated by both subjective listening tests and applications to film dubbing and looping. In ABX listening tests, the listeners preferred the subband based output by 92.1% as compared to the full-band based output.