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MELP (Mixed-Excitation Linear Predictive) Vocoder Algorithm - 2400 bps Federal Standard speech coder
The MELP (Mixed-Excitation Linear Predictive) Vocoder Algorithm is the 2400 bps Federal Standard speech coder. The selection test concentrated on four areas: intelligibility, voice quality, talker recognizability, and communicability. The selection criteria also included hardware parameters such as processing power, memory usage, and delay. MELP was selected as the best of the seven candidates and even beat the FS1016 4800 bps vocoder, a vocoder with twice the bit-rate.
Traditional pitched-excited LPC vocoders use either a periodic pulse train or white noise as the excitation for an all-pole synthesis filter. These vocoders produce intelligible speech at very low bit rates, but they sometimes sound mechanical or buzzy and are prone to annoying thumps and tonal noises.
These problems arise from the inability of a simple pulse train to reproduce all kinds of voiced speech. The MELP Vocoder uses a mixed-excitation model that can produce more natural sounding speech because it can represent a richer ensemble of possible speech characteristics.
MELP is robust in difficult background noise environments such as those frequently encountered in commercial and military communication systems. It is very efficient in its computational requirements. This translates into relatively low power consumption, an important consideration for portable systems.
Traditional pitched-excited LPC vocoders use either a periodic pulse train or white noise as the excitation for an all-pole synthesis filter. These vocoders produce intelligible speech at very low bit rates, but they sometimes sound mechanical or buzzy and are prone to annoying thumps and tonal noises.
These problems arise from the inability of a simple pulse train to reproduce all kinds of voiced speech. The MELP Vocoder uses a mixed-excitation model that can produce more natural sounding speech because it can represent a richer ensemble of possible speech characteristics.
MELP is robust in difficult background noise environments such as those frequently encountered in commercial and military communication systems. It is very efficient in its computational requirements. This translates into relatively low power consumption, an important consideration for portable systems.
Features
- The MELP Vocoder is based on the traditional LPC parametric model, but also includes four additional features. These are mixed-excitation, aperiodic pulses, pulse dispersion, and adaptive spectral enhancement.
- The mixed-excitation is implemented using a multi-band mixing model. This model can simulate frequency dependent voicing strength using a novel adaptive filtering structure based on a fixed filterbank. The primary effect of this multi-band mixed-excitation is to reduce the buzz usually associated with LPC vocoders, especially in broadband acoustic noise.
- When the input speech is voiced, the MELP vocoder can synthesize speech using either periodic or aperiodic pulses. Aperiodic pulses are most often used during transition regions between voiced and unvoiced segments of the speech signal. This feature allows the synthesizer to reproduce erratic glottal pulses without introducing tonal noises.
- The pulse dispersion is implemented using fixed pulse dispersion filter based on a spectrally flattened triangle pulse. This filter has the effect of spreading the excitation energy with a pitch period. This, in turn, reduces the harsh quality of the synthetic speech.
- The adaptive spectral enhancement filter is based on the poles of the LPC vocal tract filter and is used to enhance the formant structure in the synthetic speech. This filter improves the match between synthetic and natural bandpass waveforms, and introduces a more natural quality to the speech output.
Benefits
- MELP Vocoder mixed-excitation model represents a richer range of speech characteristics and produces more natural sounding speech.
- MELP algorithm is very efficient for use in low power applications.
- MELP is available as binary or source code (C and assembly) either standalone, as part of a library, or with a VoIP stack.
- MELP may be licensed for a flat fee and VOCAL does not charge a royalty
Deliverables
- ANSI-C
- DSP code
- EXE
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