Voice morphing using 3D waveform interpolation surfaces and lossless tube area functions (Q2570562)

Summary: Voice morphing is the process of producing intermediate or hybrid voices between the utterances of two speakers. It can also be defined as the process of gradually transforming the voice of one speaker to that of another. The ability to change the speaker's individual characteristics and to produce high-quality voices can be used in many applications. Examples include multimedia and video entertainment, as well as enrichment of speech databases in text-to-speech systems. In this study we present a new technique which enables production of a given number of intermediate voices or of utterances which gradually change from one voice to another. This technique is based on two components: (1) creation of a 3D prototype waveform interpolation (PWI) surface from the LPC residual signal, to produce an intermediate excitation signal; (2) a representation of the vocal tract by a lossless tube area function, and an interpolation of the parameters of the two speakers. The resulting synthesized signal sounds like a natural voice lying between the two original voices.