Pitch detection of speech signals using the cross-correlation technique

To generate high quality speech using the linear predictive coding (LPC) technique, a method for detecting pitch contour is critical since the human ear is sensitive to small pitch variation in speech. The auto-correlation method, though simple to implement with digital signal processors (DSPs), can result in perceptible unnaturalness. This paper describes the cross-correlation technique that can be used to obtain the pitch information more accurately than the auto-correlation method for certain speech samples. Experimental results illustrate the pitch contour detected using both techniques. In general, the cross-correlation method generates less error than the auto-correlation method for pitch determination in an LPC scheme while having the advantage of requiring less computation.