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

Although considerable effort has been devoted to both fundamental frequency (F₀) and spectral envelope estimation in the field of speech processing, the problem of determining F₀ and spectral envelopes has largely been tackled independently. If F₀ 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 F₀ estimate. F₀ 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 F₀ and spectral envelope simultaneously. We confirmed experimentally the significant advantage of this joint estimation approach for both F₀ estimation and spectral envelope estimation.