Mrboni

Hey. Do there exist any ways to analyse formats of human speech in Max?

formant-analysis

I think there's a way. I myself, I'm just now trying to dig into spectral stuff within max.

Check out Jean Francois Charle's videos on youtube. That's one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsjdzjOrrn4

And go to cycling'74's share page that hosts a link to his article on spectral synthesis in max. You can also download example patches.

I haven't started yet. But maybe that could be a starting point for you.

Check out Jean Francois Charle's videos on youtube. That's one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsjdzjOrrn4

And go to cycling'74's share page that hosts a link to his article on spectral synthesis in max. You can also download example patches.
https://cycling74.com/share.html

Thanks for the comment. That spectral resynthesis was nice.

What I want to do though is identify the formants in human speech, in realtime, so I can tell at any given moment the vowel sound being produced.

I imagine that it should be possible given that it's fairly straightforward to generate those formant sounds artificially....?

The main difficulty is to "seperate" the peaks of the pitch harmonics from the formant peaks. Two commonly used techniques are cepstrum and lpc.

I remember an external which would directly output the vowels but i can't recall its name... :(

Anyone remember the name of that external?! I want.. :)

There used to be a lpc~ object in the Ircam forum distribution. On maxobjects.com, it shows up as only Mac OS 9.

There is a gbr.lpc object in the FTM/gabor stuff.

There used to be a tap.lpc~ object in Tap Tools (around 2002) also. It could import LPC analysis files from csound.

LPC analysis gives you filter coefficients for an IIR Filter, that will "model" the frequency response of the vocal tract.

So you will still need a method to identify the formants in that spectrum (and a method to calculate the spectrum from the filter coefficients, which puzzles me). But this should work a lot better than looking at the original speech spectrum.

I've never tried it myself but from what I've read, formant tracking is no easy task. There are also approaches using neural networks and dynamic programming...

BTW, there's a new collection of realtime lpc externals by mark cartwright:

http://www.markcartwright.com/projects/lpcToolkit/

LPC analysis gives you filter coefficients for an IIR Filter, that will "model" the frequency response of the vocal tract.
So you will still need a method to identify the formants in that spectrum (and a method to calculate the spectrum from the filter coefficients, which puzzles me). But this should work a lot better than looking at the original speech spectrum. 

BTW, there's a new collection of realtime lpc externals by mark cartwright:
http://www.markcartwright.com/projects/lpcToolkit/


Thanks mudang. Could this be used to estimate the closest formant match based on simulated examples of each formant? - 

http://ftm.ircam.fr/index.php/Gesture_Follower

Thanks mudang.  Could this be used to estimate the closest formant match based on simulated examples of each formant? - http://ftm.ircam.fr/index.php/Gesture_Follower


Hey Mrboni. How far did you get with this in the end? I am doing something extreemly similar, and after a little research seem to have reached the same conclusion as you.

Wondering if how this was working out for you.

Hey Mrboni.  How far did you get with this in the end?  I am doing something extreemly similar, and after a little research seem to have reached the same conclusion as you. 

Wondering if how this was working out for you.


I ended up running out of time for the event this was for so didn't get very far.

I'd be interested in sharing ideas and progess on this. What do you plan to use it for?

Have you played with either the LPC externals or the Gesture follower yet?

I am working on a project now that needs to connect microphone> LPC data > GF. Has anyone had experience with this?

chiming in with nothing helpful but enthusiasm.

I've been listening to a lot of the Paul Di Marinis album Music as a Second Language, which is pretty LPC heavy, and curious wahts out there nowadays, toolset wise-

chiming in with nothing helpful but enthusiasm. 

I've been listening to a lot of the Paul Di Marinis album Music as a Second Language, which is pretty LPC heavy, and curious wahts out there nowadays, toolset wise- 

Formant analysis