Jove
Visualize
Contact Us
JoVE
x logofacebook logolinkedin logoyoutube logo
ABOUT JoVE
OverviewLeadershipBlogJoVE Help Center
AUTHORS
Publishing ProcessEditorial BoardScope & PoliciesPeer ReviewFAQSubmit
LIBRARIANS
TestimonialsSubscriptionsAccessResourcesLibrary Advisory BoardFAQ
RESEARCH
JoVE JournalMethods CollectionsJoVE Encyclopedia of ExperimentsArchive
EDUCATION
JoVE CoreJoVE BusinessJoVE Science EducationJoVE Lab ManualFaculty Resource CenterFaculty Site
Terms & Conditions of Use
Privacy Policy
Policies

Related Experiment Videos

Speech perception based on spectral peaks versus spectral shape.

James M Hillenbrand1, Robert A Houde, Robert T Gayvert

  • 1Department of Speech Pathology and Audiology, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan 49008, USA. james.hillenbrand@wmich.edu

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
|July 15, 2006
PubMed
Summary

Speech intelligibility relies heavily on spectral envelope peaks, conveying significant information. However, detailed spectral shape offers a slight, measurable advantage for speech perception.

Related Concept Videos

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by
Same author

Phonetics exercises using the Alvin experiment-control software.

Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR·2014
Same author

Perception of sinewave vowels.

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America·2011
Same author

The role of f (0) and formant frequencies in distinguishing the voices of men and women.

Attention, perception & psychophysics·2009
Same author

Open source software for experiment design and control.

Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR·2005
Same author

A narrow band pattern-matching model of vowel perception.

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America·2003
Same author

Speech synthesis using damped sinusoids.

Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR·2002

Area of Science:

  • Acoustics
  • Speech Science
  • Signal Processing

Background:

  • Speech intelligibility is crucial for communication.
  • The spectral envelope of speech signals plays a vital role.
  • Understanding the contribution of spectral features is essential.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To determine the relative importance of spectral envelope peaks versus detailed spectral shape for speech intelligibility.
  • To compare information conveyed by simplified spectral representations against detailed ones.

Main Methods:

  • Utilized two source-filter synthesizers with identical structures.
  • One synthesizer used detailed spectral envelope shape; the other used only spectral envelope peaks.
  • Listeners identified sentences and nonsense syllables produced by both synthesizers.

Related Experiment Videos

Main Results:

  • The peaks-only method conveyed nearly as much speech information as the detail-preserving method.
  • Every test demonstrated a measurable, albeit small, advantage for spectral detail.
  • Both methods yielded high levels of speech intelligibility.

Conclusions:

  • Spectral envelope peaks are a primary determinant of speech intelligibility.
  • While spectral detail offers a slight benefit, its contribution is less critical than peak information.
  • This highlights the robustness of speech perception to spectral simplification.