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15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS-15)Barcelona, Spain |
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15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS-15)Barcelona, Spain |
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The performance of speech enhancement algorithms deteriorates rapidly
with decreasing signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). At a low SNR, high intensity
phonemes such as vowels are therefore more likely to be enhanced than
low intensity speech segments such as many consonants. Although the
selective enhancement of vowels enhances transitional cues for consonant
recognition, it simultaneously degrades relative-amplitude cues. Experiments
with normal-hearing subjects were performed to determine the overall
effect of selective enhancement of vowels on the intelligibility of
consonants in consonant-vowel-consonant utterances.
In quiet, a
12-dB enhancement of the vowels did not significantly reduce consonant
intelligibility compared with an unenhanced control condition at 6
dB (A). When unenhanced utterances were presented in background noise
with an average SNR of -6 dB at the vowel segments, 50.1% of the consonants
were correctly identified while 69.8% of consonants were recognised
in a condition where the consonant SNR remained unchanged but where
the vowels were selectively amplified by 12 dB. Equal enhancement of
the vowels and consonants by 12 dB, however, led to 91.5% consonant
recognition. We conclude that speech-enhancement algorithms should
enhance all speech segments to the greatest possible extent, even if
this leads to selective enhancement of some phoneme categories over
others.
Bibliographic reference. Meyer, Georg F. / Morse, Robert P. (2003): "The intelligibility of consonants in noisy vowel-consonant-vowel sequences when the vowels are selectively enhanced", In ICPhS-15, 2313-2316.