Speech processor

Taxonomy of Speech Sounds

Voiced or unvoiced (유성음 vs. 무성음)

• All the voewels are voiced sounds
• Consonants are voiced or unvoiced sounds
• Voiced sounds are resonant.
• Unvoiced sounds are noisy.

Vowels

• position of articulators: high, mid, low
• shoae of lips: rounded or not
  -place of constriction: front, central, retroflex

Vocoder

Vocoder (Voice coder)

• reproducing an intelligible facsimile of a voice for recorded messages on telephone systems
• efficiency matters: to reduce the information content in voice messages(일정 기준으로 추출된 정보의 목소리만을 전달하는 것이 목표였다)
  

  Channel vocoder

• analysis(encoding) / decoding(synthesis)
• a limited set of parameters from speech input in the analysis part
• The information rate required for transmission of the parameters is much less than that required for transmission of the unprocessed speech signal

Voice coding

How to extract information

• Information about the excitation of the vocal tract is extracted with a voicing detector and with a pitch (or fundamental frequency detector)
• The voicing detector determines whetere the current speech sound is voiced or unvoiced.
• Pitch detector determines the frequency of glottal opening for voiced speech sound.
• Information about the configuration of the vocal tract is extracted with a back of bandpass filters and envelope detector.
• This analysis provides snapshots of the filtering by the vocal tract at 5~30 ms interval.

How to synthesize the sound

• to reconstruct the speech waveform for the listener.
• Voicing control input(binary) is used to switch between a noise source or a source of periodic pulse.
• The outputs of the multiplier blocks are envelop signals for each bandpass filters.
• A synthesized speech signal is formed by summing the outputs of the bandpass filters.

Implications for Cochlear Implants

• The amount of information that can be presented and perceived with a cochlear implant is much less.
• Perception of electrical stimuli is different from perception of acoustic stimuli. (Pitch saturation limit) : Electrical stimuli has cannot make proper pitch over 3MHz, although acoustic stimuli dosen’t have limitation on pitch saturation.

Pitch saturation limit

• Perception of lectrical stimuli is different from perception of acoustic stimuli.
• Pitch saturation limit: typically around 300 pulses/s for electrical pulses or 300Hz for electrical sinusoids. Higher rates or requencies do not produce increases in pitch.
• In normal hearing, different pitches are heard over much wider ranges of rates or frequencies, probalby through combinations of rate and place cues.

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Speech Processing Strategies

F0/F1/F2

• F0: 300Hz 미만의 주파수를 이용하여 pulse rate를 본다.
• F1: 300~1,000Hz 의 주파수
• F2: 1.000~3.000Hz 의 주파수

A1, A2에 해당하는 amplitude를 pulse rate를 기반으로 modulate 해서 신호를 전달한다.
Formant: 어음에서 나타나는 peak

MPEAK

• 주파수를 좀 더 자세하게 보기 시작했다. 이전 model보다 자음을 더 강조.
• MPEAK extracts high-frequency information from the speech signal, in addition to formant information
• MPEAK strategy, as well as the F0/F1/F2 strategy, tends to make erros in formant extraction in noise environment.

이전 모델들은 feature extraction strategy이다.

CA

• filter만 존재한다. (Let the brain do the work)
• Stimulus was delivered simultaneously to electrodes in analog form
• Problem of the CA: Channel interaction (channel III, for example) is a main issue of CA model.

CIS

• "Pulsatile" processing + Predetermined
• Biphasic pulse trains were delivered to the electrodes in a non-simultaneous pattern
• Less channel interaction : 각 채널에 pulse가 도달하는 시간이 다르다. 동시에 pulse가 가지 않기 때문에(interleaved) SG 입장에서 보면 주변 cell들과 다른 시간에 pulse를 전달받기 때문에 channel interaction을 현저하게 줄일 수 있었다.

SPEAK, ACE

• CIS의 본격적인 활용
• m개의 filter, n개의 전극 : 더 많은 수의 filter bank를 구현해서 신호가 센 주파수 n개를 선별해서 n개의 전극을 자극한다.
• Major differences between CIS and n-of-m
  • N-of-m strategy has greater number of bandpass filter.
  • N-of-m strategy is based on temporal frames
  • The SPEAK strategy selects 6~8 largets peaks(n) and has a fixed 250n Hz per channel rate
  • The ACE strategy has a larger range of peak selection(8~12) and higher rate(900~1,200Hz) than the SPEAK strategy.

FSP

• CIS-based strategy
• 의미없는 low frequency signal을 줄임