In a collaborative research project, several monaural and binaural noise reduction algorithms have been comprehensively evaluated. In this article, eight selected noise reduction algorithms were assessed using instrumental measures, with a focus on the instrumental evaluation of speech intelligibility. Four distinct, reverberant scenarios were created to reflect everyday listening situations: a...

In this paper, novel Variable length Teager Energy Operator (VTEO) based Mel cepstral features, viz., VTMFCC are proposed for automatic classification of normal and pathological voices. Experiments have been carried out using this proposed feature set, MFCC and their score-level fusion. Classification was performed using a 2 order polynomial classifier on a subset of the MEEI database. The equa...

Numerous research has investigated how first language influences the perception of foreign sounds. The present study focuses on the perception of voiceless English fricatives by Japanese listeners with advanced and intermediate level English proficiency, and compares their results with that of English native listeners. Listeners identified consonants embedded in /a __ a/ in quiet, multi-speaker...

A computational model to predict MOS of processed speech is proposed. The system measures the distortion of processed speech (compared to the source speech) using a peripheral model of the mammalian auditory system and a psychophysically-inspired measure, and maps the distortion value onto the MOS scale. This paper describes our attempt to derive a “universal”, database-independent, distortion-...

In this paper, Discrete-wavelet transform (DWT) based algorithm are used for speech signal denoising. Here both hard and soft thresholding are used for denoising. Analysis is done on noisy speech signal corrupted by babble noise at 0dB, 5dB, 10dB and 15dB SNR levels. Simulation & results are performed in MATLAB 7.10.0 (R2010a). Output SNR (Signal to Noise Ratio) and MSE (Mean Square Error) is c...

Traditional noise-suppression algorithms have been shown to improve speech quality, but not speech intelligibility. Motivated by prior intelligibility studies of speech synthesized using the ideal binary mask, an algorithm is proposed that decomposes the input signal into time-frequency (T-F) units and makes binary decisions, based on a Bayesian classifier, as to whether each T-F unit is domina...

Whether in a noisy daycare center, home, or classroom, many of the environments children are exposed to are, undoubtedly, not acoustically ideal for speech processing. Yet, somehow, these toddlers are still able to acquire vocabularies consisting of hundreds of words. The current study explores the effect of background speech noise on children's early word learning (specifically, their ability ...

The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of the increased instantaneous input dynamic range (IIDR) in the Nucleus Freedom cochlear implant (CI) system on recipients' ability to perceive soft speech and speech in noise. Ten adult Freedom CI recipients participated. Two maps differing in IIDR were placed on each subject's processor at initial activation. The IIDR was set to 30 dB fo...

The paper describes the performance of a task-oriented continuous automatic speech recognition (ASR) system in the computer game interface in noisy conditions. First, the process of designing the ASR system for Polish, based on CMU Sphinx4, is presented. Then, the concept of the computer game called Rally Navigator is described. The experiments were first run for the clean speech, and then repe...

This article investigated the relationship between age at onset of canonical babbling and audibility of amplified speech in children with hearing impairment. Thirteen children with severe-profound hearing impairment and two children with normal hearing participated in a longitudinal investigation of vocalization development. A nonconcurrent multiple baseline design was used to analyze vocalizat...