Efficient Spectral Envelope Estimation and Its Application to Pitch Shifting and Envelope Preservation

In this article the estimation of the spectral envelope of sound signals is addressed. The intended application for the developed algorithm is pitch shifting with preservation of the spectral envelope in the phase vocoder. As a first step the different existing envelope estimation algorithms are investigated and their specific properties discussed. As the most promising algorithm the cepstrum based iterative true envelope estimator is selected. By means of controlled sub-sampling of the log amplitude spectrum and by means of a simple step size control for the iterative algorithm the run time of the algorithm can be decreased by a factor of 2.5-11. As a remedy for the ringing effects in the the spectral envelope that are due to the rectangular filter used for spectral smoothing we propose the use of a Hamming window as smoothing filter. The resulting implementation of the algorithm has slightly increased computational complexity compared to the standard LPC algorithm but offers significantly improved control over the envelope characteristics. The application of the true envelope estimator in a pitch shifting application is investigated. The main problems for pitch shifting with envelope preservation in a phase vocoder are identified and a simple yet efficient remedy is proposed.