Human Speech Production Based on a Linear Predictive Vocoder – An Interactive Tutorial

This tutorial explains the principle of the human speech production with the aid of a Linear Predictive Vocoder (LPC vocoder) and the use of interactive learning procedures. The components of the human speech organ, namely the excitation and the vocal tract parameters, are computed. The components are then fed into the synthesis part of a vocoder which finally generates a synthesised speech signal. The user can replay the signal and compare it with the reference speech signal. For visual comparison, the reference speech signal and the reconstructed speech signal are depicted in both, the time and frequency domain. For the reconstructed signal, also the pitch frequency contour is graphically presented and the user can directly manipulate this contour. The main advantage of the tutorial are its numerous interactive functions. The tutorial is based on HTML pages and Java applets and can be downloaded from the WWW.