Patent ID: 7039584
Filing Date: 2006-05-02
Classification: G10L

Abstract:
1. A speech coding method, comprising: a learning step including, learning representatives from a first speech signal, each representative stored in a database as part of a set of one or more representatives that represent a class of acoustic units, each class of acoustic units based on a statistical model and not based on predetermined phonemes or words; an encoding step including, segmenting a second speech signal, determining recognized segments of the second speech signal, each recognized segment including a portion of the second speech signal that corresponds to at least one of the representatives stored in the database, determining respective best representatives of at least one prosody parameter of the recognized segments, each best representative chosen, from among the representatives of the same class of acoustic units, as the representative that best approximates the at least one prosody parameter of the respective recognized segment, and encoding the second speech signal, at a bit rate of less than 800 bits/s, by encoding at least a first best representative of the at least one prosody parameter of a respective first recognized segment and by encoding a difference between the at least one prosody parameter of the first best representative and the at least one prosody parameter of the first recognized segment; encoding a temporal alignment of the best representatives by using a dynamic time warping (DTW) path; and searching for a nearest neighbor in a table of shapes.