From artificial voices in GPS to automatic systems of dictation, from voice-based identity verification to voice pathology detection, speech processing applications are nowadays omnipresent in our daily life. By offering solutions to companies seeking for efficiency enhancement with simultaneous cost saving, the market of speech technology is forecast to be particularly promising in the next ye...

A method is proposed to extract glottal-flow spectra from numerical simulations of vocal-fold behavior with a two-mass model including dynamic flow separation. The numerical spectrum, whose general form complies with that of signal glottal-flow models, allows stylization with three linear segments. The slope of the first segment remains relatively constant when source control parameters are var...

The main difficulty in glottal waveform estimation is the separation of the unknown vocal tract and glottal components of the speech signal. Several glottal quality measures (GQM’s) have been proposed to objectively assess the quality of source-tract separation by exploiting known properties of glottal waveforms. In this paper, we present a performance evaluation of 10 GQM’s based on the consis...

This paper proposes a model for natural quality voiced speech synthesis using code excited linear all-pole filter for modeling the glottal source signal. Classical glottal signal models are explicit-time functions which inhibit joint sourcetract parameter estimation and require pitch synchronous estimation with precise segmentation of open and closed glottis phase. These problems are overcome i...

During production of glottal stops the glottal vibration has unequal cycles and is caused by laryngealization. While one can perceive the features of laryngealization in the speech, it is difficult to analyse the signal to detect these source features from the standard spectrum-based analysis methods. In this paper we propose methods to extract the voice source vibration characteristics, and sh...

Glottal marking of vowel-initial German words by glottalization and glottal stop insertion were investigated in dependence on speech rate, word type (content vs. function words), word accent, phrasal position and the following vowel. The analysed material consisted of speeches of Konrad Adenauer, Thomas Mann and Richard von Weizsäcker. The investigation shows that not only the left boundary of ...

Glottal volume velocity waveform, the acoustical excitation of voiced speech, cannot be acquired through direct measurements in normal production of continuous speech. Glottal inverse filtering (GIF), however, can be used to estimate the glottal flow from recorded speech signals. Unfortunately, the usefulness of GIF algorithms is limited since they are sensitive to noise and call for high-quali...

The use of high-speed videoendoscopy (HSV) for the assessment of vocal-fold vibrations dictates the development of efficient techniques for glottal image segmentation. We present a new glottal segmentation method using a local-based active contour framework. The use of local-based features and the exploitation of the vibratory pattern allows for dealing effectively with image noise and cases wh...

Because voice signals result from vocal fold vibration, perceptually meaningful vibratory measures should quantify those aspects of vibration that correspond to differences in voice quality. In this study, glottal area waveforms were extracted from high-speed videoendoscopy of the vocal folds. Principal component analysis was applied to these waveforms to investigate the factors that vary with ...

Electroglottography is a common method for providing noninvasive measurements of glottal activity. The derivative of the electroglottographic signal, however, has not attracted much attention, although it yields reliable indicators of glottal closing instants. The purpose of this paper is to provide a guide to the usefulness of this signal. The main features that are to be found in this signal ...