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Comparison of two methods of voice activity detection in field studies
Fredric Lindstrom1, Keni Ren, Haibo Li
1University of Gothenburg, Department of Public Health and Community Medicine, Box 414, Gothenburg SE-405 30, Sweden. fredric.lindstrom@amm.gu.se
Purpose:
To evaluate and compare the performance of 2 methods of voice activity detection (neck-attached accelerometer vs. binaural recordings) in field studies in environments where voice activity normally occurs.
Method:
A group of 11 healthy adults wore recording equipment during their lunch break. We used binary classification to analyze the results from the 2 methods. The output was compared to a gold standard, obtained through listening tests, and the probability for sensitivity (Ps) and false positive (Pf) was rated. The binary classifiers were set for consistent sensitivity of 99%; thus, the lower false positive rate would indicate the method with the better performance.
Results:
The neck-attached accelerometer (Pf = 0.5%) performed significantly (p < .001) better than the binaural method (Pf = 7%).
Conclusion:
The neck-attached accelerometer is more suitable than the binaural method for voice assessments in environments where people are speaking in close proximity to each other and where the signal-to-noise ratio is moderate to low.
