Analysis of a digital technique for frequency transposition of speech
Vincent DiGirolamo · Calhoun: The Naval Postgraduate School Institutional Archive (Naval Postgraduate School) · 1985
Frequency transposition is the process of raising or lowering the frequency content (pitch) of an audio signal. The hearing impaired community has the greatest interest in the application of frequency transposition. Though several analog and digital frequency transposing hearing aid systems have been built and tested, this investigates a possible digital processing alternative. Pole shifting, in the z-domain of an autoregressive (all pole) model of speech was proven to be a viable theory for changing frequency content Since linear predictive coding (LPC) techniques are used to code, analyze and synthesize speech, with the resulting LPC coefficients related to the coefficients of an equivalent autoregressive model, a linear relationships between LPC coefficients and frequency transposition is explored. This theoretical relationship is first established using a pure sine wave and then is extended into processing speech. The resulting speech synthesis experiments failed to substantiate the conjectures of this thesis. However, future research avenues are suggested that may lead to a viable approach to transpose speech.