Improving the Understandability of Speech Synthesis by Modeling Speech in Noise

Langner, Brian; Black, Alan W.

doi:10.1109/icassp.2005.1415101

Cited by 32 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…Rather, the study of LS is motivated by a desire to understand the basis for its intelligibility-enhancing properties. Indeed, speech modification algorithms inspired by LS for both synthetic (Langner and Black, 2005;ValentiniBotinhao et al, 2012) and natural speech (Skowronski and Harris, 2006;Zorila et al, 2012) have been shown in a recent evaluation to lead to gains worth more than 4 dB of additional noise (Cooke et al, 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

The contribution of durational and spectral changes to the Lombard speech intelligibility benefit

Cooke

Mayo

Villegas

2014

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

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Speech produced in the presence of noise (Lombard speech) is typically more intelligible than speech produced in quiet (plain speech) when presented at the same signal-to-noise ratio, but the factors responsible for the Lombard intelligibility benefit remain poorly understood. Previous studies have demonstrated a clear effect of spectral differences between the two speech styles and a lack of effect of fundamental frequency differences. The current study investigates a possible role for durational differences alongside spectral changes. Listeners identified keywords in sentences manipulated to possess either durational or spectral characteristics of plain or Lombard speech. Durational modifications were produced using linear or nonlinear time warping, while spectral changes were applied at the global utterance level or to individual time frames. Modifications were made to both plain and Lombard speech. No beneficial effects of durational increases were observed in any condition. Lombard sentences spoken at a speech rate substantially slower than their plain counterparts also failed to reveal a durational benefit. Spectral changes to plain speech resulted in large intelligibility gains, although not to the level of Lombard speech. These outcomes suggest that the durational increases seen in Lombard speech have little or no role in the Lombard intelligibility benefit.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

The contribution of durational and spectral changes to the Lombard speech intelligibility benefit

Cooke

Mayo

Villegas

2014

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

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“…For example, speech intelligibility improvement has been carried out for a limited domain task in [Langner and Black (2005)] based on voice conversion techniques. For this, they recorded the CMU SIN database [Langner and Black (2004)] containing two parallel corpora obtained respectively under clean and noisy conditions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Analysis and HMM-based synthesis of hypo and hyperarticulated speech

Picart

Drugman

Dutoit

2014

Computer Speech & Language

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“…If we could see understandability improvements for computer-generated speech like those of natural speech in noise, applications of synthesis such as spoken dialog systems would become significantly more usable in non-research environments. Recent preliminary work [5] suggests that such improvements are possible, though not trivial, to obtain.…”

Section: Background and Motivationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Using speech in noise to improve understandability for elderly listeners

Langner¹,

Black²

2005

IEEE Workshop on Automatic Speech Recognition and Understanding, 2005.

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This paper describes work designed to improve understandability of spoken output, specifically for the elderly, by using a speaking style employed by people to improve their understandability when speaking in poor channel conditions. We describe an experiment that shows the understandability gains that are possible using naturally-produced examples of this style. Additionally, we describe how to model this style, and evaluate the differences in understandability for speech synthesis produced using those models.

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Improving the Understandability of Speech Synthesis by Modeling Speech in Noise

Cited by 32 publications

References 3 publications

The contribution of durational and spectral changes to the Lombard speech intelligibility benefit

The contribution of durational and spectral changes to the Lombard speech intelligibility benefit

Analysis and HMM-based synthesis of hypo and hyperarticulated speech

Using speech in noise to improve understandability for elderly listeners

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