Title :
On Equalization of Bone Conducted Speech for Improved Speech Quality
Author :
Kondo, Kazuhiro ; Fujita, Tomoe ; Nakagawa, Kiyoshi
Author_Institution :
Dept. of Electr. Eng., Yamagata Univ.
Abstract :
We propose an equalizer that attempts to improve the perceived speech quality of bone-conducted speech input with ear-insert microphones, which can provide clean speech input in noisy environments. We first show that the transfer characteristics of bone-conducted speech are both speaker and microphone dependent, and propose an equalizer which is trained using simultaneously recorded airborne and bone-conducted speech. The short-term FFT amplitude ratio of airborne and bone-conducted speech is used. The amplitudes are averaged and smoothed extensively before the ratio is calculated. The trained equalizer is applied to bone-conducted speech in the frequency domain. We show that the proposed equalizer provides notable quality improvement on the bone-conducted speech input, both subjectively and objectively. We also show that the application of spectrum subtraction also helps decrease some constant level background noise found in these types of microphones
Keywords :
fast Fourier transforms; speech processing; bone conducted speech; ear-insert microphones; equalizer; short-term FFT amplitude ratio; spectrum subtraction; speech quality; Bones; Ear; Equalizers; Frequency domain analysis; Microphones; Noise cancellation; Signal processing; Speech enhancement; Speech processing; Working environment noise; Fourier transform magnitude; bone conducted speech; equalization; spectrum subtraction;
Conference_Titel :
Signal Processing and Information Technology, 2006 IEEE International Symposium on
Conference_Location :
Vancouver, BC
Print_ISBN :
0-7803-9753-3
Electronic_ISBN :
0-7803-9754-1
DOI :
10.1109/ISSPIT.2006.270839