1997 Volume 18 Issue 2 Pages 73-80
Speaker individualities in fundamental frequency (F0) contours are investigated through analyses of several speakers'uttered speech and psychoacoustic experiments. The analyses are performed to extract significant physical characteristics of F0 by using Fujisaki and Hirose's analysis method and the F-ratio of each physical characteristic. The experiments are performed to clarify the relationship between these physical characteristics and the perception of speaker's speech. The stimuli used in the experiments are re-synthesized with manipulated Fo contours and spectral envelopes averaged overall for all speakers by using the Log Magnitude Approximation analysis-synthesis system. The analysis and experimental results indicate that (1) there is speaker individuality in the Fo contours, (2) some specific parameters related to the dynamics of F0 contours have many speaker individuality features and speaker individuality can be controlled by manipulating these parameters, and (3) although there are speaker individuality features in the time-averaged F0, they help improve speaker identification less than the dynamics of the F0 contours.
