Voice conversion: Factors responsible for quality

A flexible analysis-synthesis system with signal dependent features is described and used to realize some desired voice characteristics in synthesized speech. The intelligibility of synthetic speech appears to depend on the ability to reproduce dynamic sounds such as stops, whereas the quality of voice is mainly determined by the true reproduction of voiced segments. We describe our work in converting the speech of one speaker to sound like that of another. A number of factors are important for maintaining the quality of the voice during this conversion process. These factors are derived from both the speech and electroglottograph signals.