Voice

About: Voice is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 2393 publications have been published within this topic receiving 56637 citations.

Automatic Arabic digit speech recognition and formant analysis for voicing disordered people

Abstract: In this paper, analysis of speech from voice disordered people is performed from automatic speech recognition (ASR) point of view. Six different types of voicing disorder (pathological voice) are analyzed to show the difficulty of automatically recognizing their corresponding speech. As a case study, Arabic spoken digits are taken as input. The distribution of first four formants of vowel /a/ is extracted to show a significant deviation of formants from the normal speech to disordered speech. Experiment result reveals that current ASR technique is far from reliable performance in case of pathological speech, and thereby we need attention to this.

Speech perception in individuals with auditory dys-synchrony

Abstract: Objective This study aimed to evaluate the effect of lengthening the transition duration of selected speech segments upon the perception of those segments in individuals with auditory dys-synchrony. Methods Thirty individuals with auditory dys-synchrony participated in the study, along with 30 age-matched normal hearing listeners. Eight consonant-vowel syllables were used as auditory stimuli. Two experiments were conducted. Experiment one measured the 'just noticeable difference' time: the smallest prolongation of the speech sound transition duration which was noticeable by the subject. In experiment two, speech sounds were modified by lengthening the transition duration by multiples of the just noticeable difference time, and subjects' speech identification scores for the modified speech sounds were assessed. Results Subjects with auditory dys-synchrony demonstrated poor processing of temporal auditory information. Lengthening of speech sound transition duration improved these subjects' perception of both the placement and voicing features of the speech syllables used. Conclusion These results suggest that innovative speech processing strategies which enhance temporal cues may benefit individuals with auditory dys-synchrony.

An Acoustical Study of English Plosives in Word Initial Position produced by Malays

Abstract: This paper presents key findings from a study on the realisation of the initial plosives voicing contrast in the speech performance of learners of English whose first language is Malay. This paper also presents the results of an acoustic study of the Malay voicing contrasts with a focus on acoustic measures. Waveform and spectrogram samples were used for segmentation of utterances and for obtaining values for each measurement. Measurements were taken of VOT of initial phase of selected segments occurring singly. VOT measurements were made (to the nearest msec) from the plosive release burst to the first periodic cycle of the vowel. The release burst refers to the point at which there was a sudden spread in spectral energy indicating articulatory release. For the prevoiced tokens, VOT was measured from the onset of periodicity (which shows a visible periodic signal with low frequency energy) and assigned a negative value. Results are then presented on the realisation of the voicing contrast in English spoken by Malay speakers. The results are discussed in light of the acquisition of L2 (English) sound patterning, focusing in particular on the situation presented by acquiring L2 within an L1 (Malay) context. This study (via spectrographic analysis) demonstrates that where there is phonemic similarity (but phonetic dissimilarity) across Malay and English, L1 phonetic properties are found to be strong for Malay learners of English in the L1 environment.