A mixed excitation LPC vocoder model for low bit rate speech coding

Traditional pitch-excited linear predictive coding (LPC) vocoders use a fully parametric model to efficiently encode the important information in human speech. These vocoders can produce intelligible speech at low data rates (800-2400 b/s), but they often sound synthetic and generate annoying artifacts such as buzzes, thumps, and tonal noises. These problems increase dramatically if acoustic background noise is present at the speech input. This paper presents a new mixed excitation LPC vocoder model that preserves the low bit rate of a fully parametric model but adds more free parameters to the excitation signal so that the synthesizer can mimic more characteristics of natural human speech. The new model also eliminates the traditional requirement for a binary voicing decision so that the vocoder performs well even in the presence of acoustic background noise. A 2400-b/s LPC vocoder based on this model has been developed and implemented in simulations and in a real-time system. Formal subjective testing of this coder confirms that it produces natural sounding speech even in a difficult noise environment. In fact, diagnostic acceptability measure (DAM) test scores show that the performance of the 2400-b/s mixed excitation LPC vocoder is close to that of the government standard 4800-b/s CELP coder.>