Estimation of voice source and vocal tract parameters based on ARMA analysis and a model for the Glottal source waveform

Conventional speech analysis methods based on linear prediction often fail to separate and estimate the source and vocal-tract characteristics, especially in the case of voiced sounds, because of oversimplified assumptions regarding the voice source. We have already proposed a model that is capable of expressing a wide range of voice source characteristics, and demonstrated that source and vocal-tract parameters can be well separated and correctly estimated, for vowel and vowel-like sounds, by combining the proposed source model with the linear predictive analysis. The present paper extends our approach to apply to a wider variety of speech sounds including nasal vowels and nasal consonants, by combining the proposed source model with the ARMA analysis. The validity of the system was demonstrated by analysis of synthetic and natural speech.