Evaluating the intelligibility benefit of speech modifications in known noise conditions

Speech Communication

Volumn 55, Issue 4, 2013, Pages 572-585

  Cooke, Martin ^a,b   Mayo, Catherine ^c   Valentini Botinhao, Cassia ^c   Stylianou, Yannis ^d   Sauert, Bastian ^e   Tang, Yan ^b  

^a BASQUE FOUNDATION FOR SCIENCE   (Spain)

^b UNIVERSITY OF THE BASQUE COUNTRY UPV EHU   (Spain)

^c UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH   (United Kingdom)

^d INSTITUTE OF COMPUTER SCIENCE   (Greece)

^e RWTH AACHEN UNIVERSITY   (Germany)

Author keywords

Speech intelligibility; Speech modification; Synthetic speech

Indexed keywords

HIGH NOISE LEVELS; INTENSITY CHANGE; MESSAGE RECEPTION; MODIFICATION METHODS; NATURAL SPEECH; NOISE CONDITIONS; SPEECH MASKERS; SYNTHETIC SPEECH;

SPEECH SYNTHESIS;

SPEECH INTELLIGIBILITY;

EID: 84875231469     PISSN: 01676393     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1016/j.specom.2013.01.001     Document Type: Article

References (56)

1. ANSI S3.5-1997, 1997. Methods for the calculation of the Speech Intelligibility Index.
2. S.T. Bell, D.D. Dirks, and T.D. Trine Frequency-important functions for words in high- and low context sentences J. Speech Hear. Res. 35 1992 950 959
3. B.A. Blesser Audio dynamic range compression for minimum perceived distortion IEEE Trans. Audio Electroacoust. 17 1969
4. P. Boersma Praat, a system for doing phonetics by computer Glot Internat. 5 2001 341 435
5. A.R. Bradlow, and J.A. Alexander Semantic and phonetic enhancements for speech-in-noise recognition by native and non-native listeners J. Acoust. Soc. Amer. 121 2007 2339 2349
6. C. Christiansen, M.S. Pedersen, and T. Dau Prediction of speech intelligibility based on an auditory preprocessing model Speech Comm. 52 2010 678 692
7. M. Cooke A glimpsing model of speech perception in noise J. Acoust. Soc. Amer. 119 2006 1562 1573
8. M. Cooke, and Y. Lu Spectral and temporal changes to speech produced in the presence of energetic and informational maskers J. Acoust. Soc. Amer. 128 2010 2059 2069
9. J. Dreher, and J. O'Neill Effects of ambient noise on speaker intelligibility for words and phrases J. Acoust. Soc. Amer. 29 1957 1320 1323
10. W.A. Dreschler, H. Verschuure, C. Ludvigsen, and S. Westermann ICRA noises: Artificial noise signals with speech-like spectral and temporal properties for hearing aid assessment Audiology 40 2001 148 157
11. Erro, D., Stylianou, Y., Navas, E., Hernaez, I., 2012. Implementation of simple spectral techniques to enhance the intelligibility of speech using a harmonic model. In: Proc. Interspeech, Portland, USA.
12. J. Festen, and R. Plomp Effects of fluctuating noise and interfering speech on the speech-reception threshold for impaired and normal hearing J. Acoust. Soc. Amer. 88 1990 1725 1736
13. V. Hazan, and R. Baker Acoustic-phonetic characteristics of speech produced with communicative intent to counter adverse listening conditions J. Acoust. Soc. Amer. 130 2011 2139 2152
14. V. Hazan, and A. Simpson Cue-enhancement strategies for natural VCV and sentence materials presented in noise Speech Hear. Lang. 9 1996 43 55
15. J.H. Holland Adaptation in Natural and Artificial Systems 1975 University of Michigan Press Ann Arbor
16. P. Howell, W. Barry, and D. Vinson Strength of British English accents in altered listening conditions Percept. Psychophys. 68 2006 139 153
17. Huang, D.Y., Rahardja, S., Ong, E.P., 2010. Lombard effect mimicking. In: Proc. SSW7, Kyoto, Japan, pp. 258-263.
18. J.M. Kates Signal processing for hearing aids M. Kahrs, K. Brandenberg, Applications of Digital Signal Processing to Audio and Acoustics 1998 Kluwer Academic Publishers Boston 235 277
19. H. Kawahara, I. Masuda-Katsuse, and A. Cheveigné Restructuring speech representations using a pitch-adaptive time-frequency smoothing and an instantaneous-frequency-based F0 extraction: Possible role of a repetitive structure in sounds Speech Comm. 27 1999 187 207
20. Langner, B., Black, A.W., 2005. Improving the understandability of speech synthesis by modeling speech in noise. In: Proc. ICASSP, pp. 265-268.
21. B. Lindblom Explaining phonetic variation: A sketch of the H&H theory W.J. Hardcastle, A. Marchal, Speech Production and Speech Modelling 1990 Kluwer Academic Publishers 403 439
22. E. Lombard Le signe d'élévation de la voix (the sign of the elevation of the voice) Annales des maladies de l'oreille et du larynx 37 1911 101 119
23. Y. Lu, and M. Cooke Speech production modifications produced by competing talkers, babble and stationary noise J. Acoust. Soc. Amer. 124 2008 3261 3275
24. McLoughlin, I.V., Chance, R.J., 1997. LSP-based speech modification for intelligibility enhancement. In: Proc. Digital Signal Processing, Santorini, Greece, pp. 591-594.
25. Moore, R.K., Nicolao, M., 2011. Reactive speech synthesis: Actively managing phonetic contrast along an H&H continuum. In: 17th Internat. Cong. on Phonetic Sciences, pp. 1422-1425.
26. R.J. Niederjohn, and J.H. Grotelueschen The enhancement of speech intelligibility in high noise levels by high-pass filtering followed by rapid amplitude compression IEEE Trans. Acoust. Speech Signal Process. 24 1976 277 282
27. R. Patel, and K.W. Schell The influence of linguistic content on the Lombard effect J. Speech Lang. Hear. Res. 51 2008 209 220
28. M. Picheny, N. Durlach, and L. Braida Speaking clearly for the hard of hearing I: Intelligibility differences between clear and conversational speech J. Speech Hear. Res. 28 1985 96 103
29. A.L. Pittman, and T.L. Wiley Recognition of speech produced in noise J. Speech Lang. Hear. Res. 44 2001 487 496
30. Raitio, T., Suni, A., Vainio, M., Alku, P., 2011. Analysis of HMM-based Lombard speech synthesis. In: Proc. Interspeech, Florence, Italy, pp. 2781-2784.
31. Raitio, T., Takanen, M., Santala, O., Sun, A., Vainio, M., Alku, P., 2012. On measuring the intelligibility of synthetic speech in noise do we need a realistic noise environment? In: Proc. ICASSP, pp. 4015-4028.
32. Rix, A., Beerends, J., Hollier, M., Hekstra, A., 2001. Perceptual evaluation of speech quality (PESQ)-a new method for speech quality assessment of telephone networks and codecs. In: Proc. ICASSP, pp. 749-752.
33. E.H. Rothauser, W.D. Chapman, N. Guttman, H.R. Silbiger, M.H.L. Hecker, G.E. Urbanek, K.S. Nordby, and M. Weinstock IEEE Recommended practice for speech quality measurements IEEE Trans. Audio Electroacoust. 17 1969 225 246
34. Sauert, B., Vary, P., 2006. Near end listening enhancement: Speech intelligibility improvement in noisy environments. In: Proc. ICASSP, Toulouse, France, pp. 493-496.
35. Sauert, B., Vary, P., 2010. Recursive closed-form optimization of spectral audio power allocation for near end listening enhancement. In: Proc. ITG-Fachtagung Sprachkommunikation, Bochum, Germany.
36. Sauert, B., Vary, P., 2011. Near end listening enhancement considering thermal limit of mobile phone loudspeakers. In: Proc. Conf. on Elektronische Sprachsignalverarbeitung (ESSV), Aachen, Germany, pp. 333-340.
37. M.D. Skowronski, and J.G. Harris Applied principles of clear and Lombard speech for automated intelligibility enhancement in noisy environments Speech Comm. 48 2006 549 558
38. SoX, 2012. SoX-Sound eXchange. Software. Available [Apr. 2012] from .
39. G.A. Studebaker, C.V. Pavlovic, and R.L. Sherbecoe A frequency important function for continuous discourse J. Acoust. Soc. Amer. 81 1987 1130 1138
40. W. Summers, D. Pisoni, R. Bernacki, R. Pedlow, and M. Stokes Effects of noise on speech production: Acoustic and perceptual analysis J. Acoust. Soc. Amer. 84 1988 917 928
41. Taal, C.H., Hendriks, R.C., Heusdens, R., 2012. A speech preprocessing strategy for intelligibility improvement in noise based on a perceptual distortion measure. In: Proc. ICASSP, pp. 4061-4064.
42. C.H. Taal, R.C. Hendriks, R. Heusdens, and J. Jensen An algorithm for intelligibility prediction of time-frequency weighted noisy speech IEEE Trans. Audio Speech Lang. Process. 19 2011 2125 2136
43. Tang, Y., Cooke, M., 2010. Energy reallocation strategies for speech enhancement in known noise conditions. In: Proc. Interspeech, pp. 1636-1639.
44. Tang, Y., Cooke, M., 2011. Subjective and objective evaluation of speech intelligibility enhancement under constant energy and duration constraints. In: Proc. Interspeech, Florence, Italy, pp. 345-348.
45. Tang, Y., Cooke, M., 2012. Optimised spectral weightings for noise-dependent speech intelligibility enhancement. In: Proc. Interspeech, Portland, USA.
46. T. Toda, and K. Tokuda A speech parameter generation algorithm considering global variance for HMM-based speech synthesis IEICE Trans. Inf. Syst. E90-D 2007 816 824
47. M. Uther, M.A. Knoll, and D. Burnham Do you speak E-NG-L-I-SH? a comparison of foreigner- and infant-directed speech Speech Comm. 49 2007 2 7
48. Valentini-Botinhao, C., Maia, R., Yamagishi, J., King, S., Zen, H., 2012. Cepstral analysis based on the Glimpse proportion measure for improving the intelligibility of HMM-based synthetic speech in noise. In: Proc. ICASSP Kyoto, Japan, pp. 3997-4000.
49. Valentini-Botinhao, C., Yamagishi, J., King, S., 2012. Mel cepstral coefficient modification based on the glimpse proportion measure for improving the intelligibility of HMM-generated synthetic speech in noise. In: Proc. Interspeech, Portland, USA.
50. J. Yamagishi, T. Kobayashi, Y. Nakano, K. Ogata, and J. Isogai Analysis of speaker adaptation algorithms for HMM-based speech synthesis and a constrained SMAPLR adaptation algorithm IEEE Trans. Audio Speech Lang. Process. 17 2009 66 83
51. J. Yamagishi, T. Nose, H. Zen, Z.H. Ling, T. Toda, K. Tokuda, S. King, and S. Renals A robust speaker-adaptive HMM-based text-to-speech synthesis IEEE Trans. Audio Speech Lang. Process. 17 2009 1208 1230
52. Yamagishi, J., Zen, H., Wu, Y.J., Toda, T., Tokuda, K., 2008. Yet another evaluation of the speaker-adaptive HMM-based speech synthesis system in the 2008 Blizzard Challenge. In: Proc. Blizzard Challenge Workshop.
53. S.D. Yoo, J.R. Boston, A. El-Jaroudi, C.C. Li, J.D. Durrant, K. Kovacyk, and S. Shaiman Speech signal modification to increase intelligibility in noisy environments J. Acoust. Soc. Amer. 122 2007 1138 1149
54. H. Zen, K. Tokuda, and A.W. Black Statistical parametric speech synthesis Speech Comm. 51 2009 1039 1064
55. Zorila, T.C., Kandia, V., Stylianou, Y., 2012. Speech-in-noise intelligibility improvement based on spectral shaping and dynamic range compression. In: Proc. Interspeech, Portland, USA.
56. E. Zwicker Subdivison of audible frequency range into critical bands J. Acoust. Soc. Amer. 33 1961 248