Multichannel audio is attracting rapidly increasing popularity in audio reproduction. In most cases, however, its transmission requirements are extremely demanding compared to the available bandwidth. One possible solution to this problem could be to transmit a reference channel and recreate the remaining channels at the receiving end. In this paper such a method is proposed by taking advantage...

Statistical methods for voice conversion are usually based on a single model selected in order to represent a tradeoff between goodness of fit and complexity. In this paper we assume that the best model may change over time, depending on the source acoustic features. We present a new method for spectral voice conversion called Dynamic Model Selection (DMS), in which a set of potential best mode...

As the original definition on Hilbert spectrum was given in terms of total energy and amplitude, there is a mismatch between the Hilbert spectrum and the traditional Fourier spectrum, which is defined in terms of energy density. Rigorous definitions of Hilbert energy and amplitude spectra are given in terms of energy and amplitude density in the time-frequency space. Unlike Fourier spectral ana...

Solar energy harvesting is largely limited by the spectral sensitivity of the employed energy conversion system, where usually large parts of the solar spectrum do not contribute to the harvesting scheme, and where, of the contributing fraction, the full potential of each photon is not efficiently used in the generation of electrical or chemical energy. Extrinsic sensitization through photolumi...

A spectral conversion method using multiple Gaussian Mixture Models (GMMs) based on the Bayesian framework is proposed. A typical spectral conversion framework is based on a GMM. However, in this conventional method, a GMM-appropriate number of mixtures is dependent on the amount of training data, and thus the number of mixtures should be determined beforehand. In the proposed method, the varia...

The goal of voice conversion is to transform a sentence said by one speaker, to sound as if another speaker had said it. The classical conversion based on a Gaussian Mixture Model and several other schemes suggested since, produce muffled sounding outputs, due to excessive smoothing of the spectral envelopes. To reduce the muffling effect, enhancement of the Global Variance (GV) of the spectral...

Voice conversion is a technique for modifying a source speaker’s speech to sound as if it was spoken by a target speaker. A popular approach to voice conversion is to apply a linear transformation to the spectral envelope. However, conventional parameter estimation based on least square error optimization does not necessarily lead to the best perceptual result. In this paper, a perceptually wei...

We proposed a speaking aid system using statistical voice conversion for laryngectomees, whose vocal folds have been removed. This paper investigates the influence of various small sound sources on the voice conversion accuracy. Spectral envelopes and power of sound sources are controlled independently. In total 8 different kinds of sound source signals, e.g. pulse train, sierra wave and so on,...

This paper presents a novel method of enhancing esophageal speech using statistical voice conversion. Esophageal speech is one of the alternative speaking methods for laryngectomees. Although it doesn’t require any external devices, generated voices usually sound unnatural compared with normal speech. To improve the intelligibility and naturalness of esophageal speech, we propose a voice conver...

The spectral manipulation of photons is essential for linking components in a quantum network. Large frequency shifts are needed for conversion between optical and telecommunication frequencies, while smaller shifts are useful for frequency-multiplexing quantum systems, in the same way that wavelength division multiplexing is used in classical communications. Here we demonstrate frequency and b...