Recently, we demonstrated that vocal tract length normalization (VTLN) can be applied to voice conversion tasks. In particular, when the conversion algorithm is performed in time domain, this technique is very resource-efficient and, consequently, suitable for embedded applications. In this paper, we use VTLNbased voice conversion as a novel feature of a small footprint speech synthesizer runni...

In this work we present our entry for the Voice Conversion Challenge 2016, denoting new features to previous work on GMM-based voice conversion. We incorporate frequency warping and pitch transposition strategies to perform a normalisation of the spectral conditions, with benefits confirmed by objective and perceptual means. Moreover, the results of the challenge showed our entry among the high...

This article describes techniques of vocal forgery able to affect automatic speaker recognition system in a forensic context. Vocal forgery covers two main aspects: voice transformation and voice conversion. Concerning voice transformation, this article proposes an automatic analysis of four specific disguised voices in order to detect the forgery and, for voice conversion, different ways to au...

Voice conversion is the task of transforming a source speaker’s voice so that it sounds like a target speaker’s voice. We present a GPUfriendly local regression model for voice conversion that is capable of converting speech in real-time and achieves state-of-the-art accuracy on this task. Our model uses a new approximation for computing local regression coefficients that is explicitly designed...

Voice conversion involves transformation of speaker characteristics in a speech uttered by a speaker called source speaker so as to generate a speech having voice characteristics of a desired speaker called target speaker. Voice conversion technology is used in many applications namely dubbing, to enhance the quality of the speech, text-to-speech synthesizers, online games, multimedia, music, c...

This paper describes a novel approach based on voice conversion (VC) to speaker-adaptive speech synthesis for speech-tospeech translation. Voice quality of translated speech in an output language is usually different from that of an input speaker of the translation system since a text-to-speech system is developed with another speaker’s voices in the output language. To render the input speaker...

This paper presents a comparison of methods for transforming voice quality in neutral synthetic speech to match cheerful, aggressive, and depressed expressive styles. Neutral speech is generated using the unit selection system in the MARY TTS platform and a large neutral database in German. The output is modified using voice conversion techniques to match the target expressive styles, the focus...

In this paper, we present a novel voice conversion method using model-based speech synthesis that can be used for some applications where prior knowledge or training data is not available from the source speaker. In the proposed method, training data from a target speaker is used to build a GMM-based speech model and voice conversion is then performed for each utterance from the source speaker ...

In practical applications of voice conversion, it is necessary to be able to cope with small amounts of speaker-specific training data. Consequently, most of the proposed voice conversion algorithms are based on probabilistic conversion functions. Recently, however, there has been increased interest in unit selection based approaches for voice conversion. It is evident that typical training set...

In this paper, we first provide a review of the state-of-the-art emotional voice conversion research, and existing speech databases. We then motivate development novel database (ESD) that addresses increasing research need. With ESD database1 is now made available to community. The consists 350 parallel utterances spoken by 10 native English Chinese speakers covers 5 emotion categories (neutral...