STATIC FEATURES IN ISOLATED VOWEL RECOGNITION AT HIGH PITCH

Ańıbal Ferreira

2008

Abstract

Vowel recognition is frequently based on Linear Prediction (LP) analysis and formant estimation techniques. However, the performance of these techniques decreases in the case of female or child speech because at high pitch frequencies (F0) the magnitude spectrum is scarcely sampled making formant estimation unreliable. In this paper we describe the implementation of a perceptually motivated concept of vowel recognition that is based on Perceptual Spectral Clusters (PSC) of harmonic partials. PSC based features were evaluated in automatic recognition tests using the Mahalanobis distance and using a data base of five natural Portuguese vowel sounds uttered by 44 speakers, 27 of whom are child speakers. LP based features and Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC) were also included in the tests as a reference. Results show that while the recognition performance of PSC features falls between that of LP based features and that of MFCC coefficients, the normalization of PSC features by F0 increases the performance and approaches that of MFCC coefficients. PSC features are not only amenable to a psychophysical interpretation (as LP based features are) but have also the potential to compete with global shape features such as MFCCs.

References

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Paper Citation


in Harvard Style

Ferreira A. (2008). STATIC FEATURES IN ISOLATED VOWEL RECOGNITION AT HIGH PITCH . In Proceedings of the International Conference on Signal Processing and Multimedia Applications - Volume 1: SIGMAP, (ICETE 2008) ISBN 978-989-8111-60-9, pages 63-68. DOI: 10.5220/0001934500630068


in Bibtex Style

@conference{sigmap08,
author={Ańıbal Ferreira},
title={STATIC FEATURES IN ISOLATED VOWEL RECOGNITION AT HIGH PITCH},
booktitle={Proceedings of the International Conference on Signal Processing and Multimedia Applications - Volume 1: SIGMAP, (ICETE 2008)},
year={2008},
pages={63-68},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0001934500630068},
isbn={978-989-8111-60-9},
}


in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the International Conference on Signal Processing and Multimedia Applications - Volume 1: SIGMAP, (ICETE 2008)
TI - STATIC FEATURES IN ISOLATED VOWEL RECOGNITION AT HIGH PITCH
SN - 978-989-8111-60-9
AU - Ferreira A.
PY - 2008
SP - 63
EP - 68
DO - 10.5220/0001934500630068