Envelope-onset asynchrony as a cue to voicing in initial english consonants

An acoustic cue for voicing is proposed based on the underlying processes associated with the production of the voicing contrast. This cue is based on the time asynchrony between the onsets of two amplitude-envelope signals derived from different bands of speech (i.e., envelopes derived from a lowpass-filtered band at 350 Hz and from a highpass-filtered band at 3000 Hz). Acoustic measurements made on the envelope signals of a set of 16 initial consonants represented through multiple tokens of C1VC2 syllables indicate that the onset-timing difference between the low- and high-frequency envelopes (Envelope-Onset Asynchrony or EOA) provides a reliable and robust cue for distinguishing voiced from voiceless consonants. This cue, which is simply derived in real-time, has applications to the design of sensory aids for persons with profound hearing impairments (e.g., as a supplement to lipreading), as well as to automatic speech recognition.