Vowel Conversion by Phonetic Segmentation
In this paper a system for vowel conversion between different speakers using short-time speech segments is presented. The input speech signal is segmented into period-length speech segments whose fundamental frequency and first two formants are used to find the perceivable vowel-quality. These segments are used to represent a voiced phoneme, i.e. a vowel. The approach relies on pitchsynchronous analysis and uses a modified PSOLA technique for concatenation of the vowel segments. Vowel conversion between speakers is achieved by exchanging the phonetic constituents of a source speaker’s speech waveform in voiced regions of speech whilst preserving prosodic features of the source speaker, thus introducing a method for phonetic segmentation, mapping, and reconstruction of vowels.