Comparing two recorded voices

Question

I need to find some literature in how to compare a realtime recorded voice (From a mic) against a database of pre-recorded voices. After comparing I would then need to output a

Answer 1

This is definitely not a trivial problem.

If you're seriously trying to solve it, I suggest you take a close look at how speech encoders work.

A rough break-down of the steps involved:

1. Identify the intervals in the recording, that contains vowels
2. Determine the fundamental frequency and the harmonics of the vowel sound
3. Determine the relative amplitude of the harmonics and the average frequency of the fundamental
4. Develop a "distance" metric that measures how close two vowel sounds are to each other based on the parameters from step 3
5. Calculate the distance from the vowel sounds of a new recording to those of the recordings of the data base.

The parameters from step 3 is a sort of "fingerprint" of the vocal tract. Typically the consonant sounds are not sufficiently different to be of substantial use (unless the vowel sounds from two individuals are very similar).

As a first and very simple step try to determine the average fundamental of the vowels and use that frequency as the signature.

Good luck,

Jens