• Speech Sciences
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• v.3
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• pp.132-147
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• 1998

Previously developed methods for pitch modification have not been based on the voice source model. Therefore, the synthesized speech often sounds unnatural although it may be highly intelligible. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the alteration of a voice source signal with pitch period and to establish the pitch-modification rule based on the result of this analysis. We examine the alteration of the interval of closing phase, closed phase and open phase using the excitation waveform as the pitch increases. In comparison to the previous methods which performed directly on the speech signal, the pitch modification method based on a voice source model shows high intelligibility and naturalness. This study might benefit the application to the speaker identification and the voice color conversion. Therefore the proposed method will provide high quality synthetic speech.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.85-94
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• 2003

In this paper an algorithm to reduce the size of Text-to-Speech database is proposed. The algorithm is based on the characteristics of Korean phonemic units. From the initial database, a reduced phoneme unit set is induced by articulatory similarity of concatenating phonemes. Speech data is read by one female announcer for 1000 phonetically balanced sentences. All the recorded speech is then segmented by phoneticians. Total size of the original speech data is about 640 MB including laryngograph signal. To synthesize wave, RE-PSOLA (Residual-Excited Pitch Synchronous Overlap and Add Method) was used. The voice quality of synthesized speech was compared with original speech in terms of spectrographic informations and objective tests. The quality of the synthesized speech is not much degraded when the size of synthesis DB was reduced from 320 MB to 82 MB.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.111-128
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• 2003

Aerodynamic study is valuable information about the vocal efficiency in translating airflow to acoustic signal. The purpose of this study was to investigate the differences between trained singers and untrained controls under different two pitch by simultaneous using the airway interruption method and electroglottography (EGG). Under singing a Korean lied 'Gene', 20 (Male 10, Female 10) trained singers were studied on two one-octave different tone. Mean flow rate (MFR) , subglottic pressure (Psub) and intensity were measured with aerodynamic test using the Phonatory function analyzer (Nagashima Ltd. Model PS 77H, Tokyo, Japan). Closed quotients (Qx), jitter and shimmer were also investigated by electroglottography using Lx speech studio (Laryngograph Ltd, London, UK). These data were compared with those of normal controls. MFR and Psub were increased on high pitch tone in all subject groups. Statistically significant increasing of Qx and intensity were observed in male trained singers on high pitch tone (Qx;p = .025, intensity;p < .001). Beacasue of increasing of Qx and intensity, vocal efficiency was also significantly increased in male singers (p < .001). The trained singers' phonation was more efficient than untrained singers. The result means that the trained singers can increase the loudness with little changing of mean flow rate, subglottic pressure but more increasing of glottic closed quotients.