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Speech signal modification to increase intelligibility in noisy environments
- Source :
- The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. 122(2)
- Publication Year :
- 2007
-
Abstract
- The role of transient speech components on speech intelligibility was investigated. Speech was decomposed into two components--quasi-steady-state (QSS) and transient--using a set of time-varying filters whose center frequencies and bandwidths were controlled to identify the strongest formant components in speech. The relative energy and intelligibility of the QSS and transient components were compared to original speech. Most of the speech energy was in the QSS component, but this component had low intelligibility. The transient component had much lower energy but was almost as intelligible as the original speech, suggesting that the transient component included speech elements important to speech perception. A modified version of speech was produced by amplifying the transient component and recombining it with the original speech. The intelligibility of the modified speech in background noise was compared to that of the original speech, using a psychoacoustic procedure based on the modified rhyme protocol. Word recognition rates for the modified speech were significantly higher at low signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs), with minimal effect on intelligibility at higher SNRs. These results suggest that amplification of transient information may improve the intelligibility of speech in noise and that this improvement is more effective in severe noise conditions.
- Subjects :
- Speech perception
Acoustics and Ultrasonics
Computer science
Noise pollution
Acoustics
Speech recognition
Speech Intelligibility
Intelligibility (communication)
Environment
Linear predictive coding
Speech processing
Background noise
Formant
Sound
Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous)
Word recognition
Humans
Psychoacoustics
Noise
Algorithms
Filtration
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 15208524
- Volume :
- 122
- Issue :
- 2
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....7ed7c82e86191d1fe02b3249963a324d