Speech Spectrum Modeling for Joint Estimation of Spectral Envelope and Fundamental Frequency

Although considerable effort has been devoted to both fundamental frequency (
F
₀
) and spectral envelope estimation in the field of speech processing, the problem of determining
F
₀
and spectral envelopes has largely been tackled independently. If
F
₀
were known in advance, then the spectral envelope could be estimated very reliably. On the other hand, if the spectral envelope were known in advance, then we could obtain a reliable
F
₀
estimate.
F
₀
and the spectral envelope, each of which is a prerequisite of the other, should thus be estimated jointly rather than independently in succession. On this basis, we develop a parametric speech spectrum model that allows us to estimate the
F
₀
and spectral envelope simultaneously. We confirmed experimentally the significant advantage of this joint estimation approach for both
F
₀
estimation and spectral envelope estimation.