Yet another acoustic representation of speech sounds

• Published in: 2004 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing Vol. 1; pp. I - 585
• Main Author: Minematsu, N.
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English; Japanese
• Published: Piscataway, N.J IEEE 28.09.2004
• Subjects: Acoustic distortion; Applied sciences; Coding, codes; Context modeling; Decoding; Encoding; Exact sciences and technology; Information science; Information, signal and communications theory; Loudspeakers; Microphones; Signal and communications theory; Signal processing; Signal representation. Spectral analysis; Signal, noise; Speech processing; Speech recognition; Speech synthesis; Telecommunications and information theory; Vocal tract; Speech analysis; Microphone; Acoustic properties; Audio signal; Acoustic signal; Coding; Pronunciation; Sex; Decoding; Linear distortion; Signal representation
• ISBN: 9780780384842; 0780384849
• ISSN: 1520-6149
• DOI: 10.1109/ICASSP.2004.1326053

This paper proposes yet another representation of speech sounds. The proposed speech modeling can remove both multiplicative and linear transformational distortion from speech theoretically. It means that speech sounds are represented without being affected by any static distortion inevitably involved in production, encoding, transmission, decoding, and hearing processes, such as differences in vocal tract length, gender, age, microphone, room, line, auditory characteristics, and so on. The method acoustically models not individual phones but their entire system, where only acoustic interrelation embedded in all the kinds of phones is focused. Since the method provides us with no absolute acoustic properties of phones, it cannot recognize or synthesize even a single phone. On the contrary, the proposed method is shown to be able to be applied to pronunciation assessment effectively and reliably, where the proficiency of pronunciation is estimated without using acoustic models of the individual phones directly in the matching.