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Foreign Accent and Forensic Speaker Identification in Voice Lineups: The Influence of Acoustic Features Based on Prosody

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Published on: September 27, 2024

Eliciting the most prominent perceived differences between microphones.

Andy Pearce¹, Tim Brookes¹, Martin Dewhirst¹

¹Institute of Sound Recording, University of Surrey, Guildford, Surrey, GU2 7XH, United Kingdom.

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

|June 3, 2016

Summary

Understanding microphone sound quality is key. This study identified key audio attributes like brightness, harshness, and clarity that significantly impact perceived differences between microphones.

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Area of Science:

Acoustics
Psychoacoustics
Audio Engineering

Background:

Perceived differences between microphones are not well understood.
Technical specifications and expert opinions offer limited insight into subjective audio quality.

Purpose of the Study:

To determine the perceptual attributes responsible for inter-microphone differences.
To establish a hierarchy of these attributes based on their contribution to perceived sound quality.

Main Methods:

Recording diverse programme items with studio and microelectromechanical system (MEMS) microphones.
Conducting pairwise listening comparisons and multi-dimensional scaling (MDS) analysis.
Utilizing direct elicitation and panel discussions to identify and rank perceptual attributes.

Main Results:

Up to 5 salient perceptual dimensions were identified per programme item.
A hierarchy of 40 perceptual attributes was established.
Brightness, harshness, and clarity were consistently identified as highly contributing attributes to inter-microphone differences.

Conclusions:

Identified key perceptual attributes influencing microphone sound quality.
Provides a foundation for developing objective models to predict subjective microphone performance.
Enhances understanding of audio perception in microphone selection and design.