• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.55-64
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• 2023

This study investigated the factors influencing the perceptions that military officers can harbor regarding persons who stutter in terms of how well they can adapt to the army. In total, 89 participants were randomly assigned to each of the three different conditions ("fluent speech"=23, "mildly stuttered speech"=34, and "severely stuttered speech"=32). Subsequently, the participants were asked to listen and rate each sample in terms of "the speaker's communicative functioning (i.e., speech fluency, intelligibility, naturalness, speech rate), personal traits (i.e., likeability, anxiety level, intellectual level, and sociability), and the perceived degree of the adaptability to the army." The results showed that significant differences were found between "fluent speech" and "severely stuttered speech" in the perceived communicative functionings and the perceived adaptability to the army. Moreover, there were significant differences in the same variables between "mildly stuttered speech" and "severely stuttered speech." However, there were no significant differences between "mildly stuttered speech" and "fluent speech." Following the conducting of the Pearson correlation test, strong correlations were also found between the perceived communicative functionings, in particular "speech fluency," and the perceived adaptability to the army. Those results can be employed to argue that the communicative functionings can serve as factors which influence the perceptions of persons who stutter in terms of how well they can adapt to the army. Further discussion has taken place regarding the relationship between the perceived communicative functionings and the perceived adaptability to the army.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.43 no.4
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• pp.422-435
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• 2024

This study intended to verify the effects of face masks on the Korean language in terms of acoustic, aerodynamic, and formant parameters. We chose all types of face masks available in Korea based on filter performance and folding type. Two professional voice actors (a male and a female) with more than 20 years of experience who are native Koreans and speak standard Korean participated in this study as speakers of voice data. Face masks attenuated the high-frequency range, resulting in decreased Vowel Space Area (VSA) and Vowel Articulation Index (VAI)scores and an increased Low-to-High spectral ratio (L/H ratio) in all voice samples. This can result in lower speech intelligibility. However, the degree of increment and decrement was based on the voice characteristics. For female speakers, the Speech Level (SL) and Cepstral Peak Prominence (CPP) increased with increasing face mask thickness. In this study, the presence or filter performance of a face mask was found to affect speech acoustic parameters according to the speech characteristics. Face masks provoked vocal effort when the vocal intensity was not sufficiently strong, or the environment had less reverberance. Further research needs to be conducted on the vocal efforts induced by face masks to overcome acoustic modifications when wearing masks.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.9-16
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• 2012

Though Android-based smart phones are being released in Korea, Korean TTS engine is not built on them and Google has not announced service or software developer's kit related to Korean TTS officially. Thus, application developers who want to include Korean TTS capability in their application have difficulties. In this paper, we design and implement Android OS-based Korean TTS system and service. For speed, text preprocessing and synthesis libraries are implemented using Android NDK. By using Java's thread mechanism and the AudioTrack class, the response time of TTS is minimized. For the test of implemented service, an application that reads incoming SMS is developed. The test shows that synthesized speech are generated in real-time for random sentences. By using the implemented Korean TTS service, Android application developers can transmit information easily through voice. Korean TTS service proposed and implemented in this paper overcomes shortcomings of the existing restrictive synthesis methods and provides the benefit for application developers and users.

• Transactions of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering
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• v.19 no.12
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• pp.1269-1280
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• 2009

This study was performed to construct sound performance DB of royal palace buildings and to examine the special quality more scientifically. Research target of royal palace were Changdeokgung and Gyeongbokgung. Sound insulation performance between the adjacent room and facade, room acoustics of Pyeonjeon and Chimjeon which is representative building in royal palace were examined through field measurement. Measured values of RT($T_{mf}$) at Pyeonjeon were 0.78 sec. and 1.03 sec. in Seonjeongjoen and Sajeongjoen, respectively. The RTs of both Pyeonjeon buildings were estimated suitable for speech and lecture considering their volume. The RT($T_{mf}$)s at Chimjeon were measured in range of 0.29~0.55 sec. This meant that the acoustic energy in rooms was decreased by sound transmission through mulberry paper(Hanji) of traditional windows and doors. As a sound insulation performance, the single-number quantities($D_{ls,2m,nT,w}$) of the building facades in Pyeonjeon and Chimjeon were measured 4~20 dB. Also the single-number quantities($D_{p,w}$) between the adjacent rooms in Chimjeon were measured 3~18 dB. Sound insulation performance of traditional building elements such as window and door depended strongly on their layers and area.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SP
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• v.49 no.1
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• pp.112-118
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• 2012

In daily life, there are many information broadcasting by using voice information systems. If surrounding noises are mixed with the information signals, the clarity of the signal become down graded too much to understand. Surrounding noises are not uniformed, but very irregular signals always changing. Therefore, it is very hard to control the output signals along with the irregular signals. This paper suggests a method to change the level of the voice information adapting to the surround noise in the white noise environment. The surround noise level is measured by subtracting the stored output voice signal from the voice signal degraded by the noise. The noise is used to estimation of SNR. And, the method to change the output level of voice signal adapting to the noise level. The suggested adaptive voice information system has the advantage to improve listeners' speech perception and to use amplifier's energy effectively.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Educational Facilities
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.3-14
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• 2021

Speech information of teachers is transmitted to students in classrooms so that appropriate aural environment should be provided for academic purposes. Many researches have been undertaken for classroom acoustics, and acoustic standards of domestic classrooms were suggested based on the reverberation time and background noise level. However, these standards are suitable for middle and high schools and so not consider the auditory ability by ages. As a precedent research, the present study was begun to suggest an acoustic standard for lower grade elementary school classrooms with children under age 9 who have not normal auditory ability. In order to do this, acoustic performances of the lower grade classrooms were measured and compared with the general classrooms. Also, change of acoustic parameters depending on the desk layout was measured and analyzed. The measured acoustic parameters were background noise, signal to noise ratio, RT, STI, D₅₀, and IACC. As a result, it was found that background noise is exceed the standard of 35dB(A) at the schools along the road sides. Also, it was shown that most of acoustic parameters are higher in the classrooms built recently rather than the old classrooms. Generally, there are not much difference of acoustic parameters among the various desk layouts but, better acoustic performances are acquired at the center line and the seats near sound source. Also, Higher IACC was measured at the seats on the center line facing the source squarely.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.106-109
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• 1997

In the area of the speech synthesis techniques, the waveform coding methods maintain the intelligibility and naturalness of synthetic speech. In order to apply the waveform coding techniques to synthesis by rule, however, we must be able to alter the pitches for prosody control of synthetic speech. In this paper, we propose a new pitch alteration technique in time-frequency hybrid domain, that compensates phase distortion of the cepstral pitch alteration method with time scaling method in the time domain. This method can remove some phase spectrum distortion which is occurred in conjunction point between the waveforms in continued frames. Also, we can obtain little magnitude spectrum distortion below 1.18% for pitch alteration of 200%.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.4 no.3
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• pp.161-169
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• 2012

The purpose of this study was to investigate the characteristics of speech intelligibility of spontaneous speech and the vowel space parameters in patients with Parkinson's disease. Ten PD patients (M=5, F=5) and a corresponding control group of ten normal adults participated in this study. Firstly, subjects were asked to tell a story about their hometown and youth in order to analyze speech intelligibility. Secondly, the subjects were also asked to repeat four vowels (/a/, /i/, /u/, /e/) five times in order to compare their vowel spaces. The results were as follows: (1) the speech intelligibility of the PD group was lower than that of the control group. (2) Four parameters including vowel area, vowel articulatory index, formant centralization ratio, F2i/F1u ratio were significantly different in each group. For instance, vowel area and F2 ratio were wider and higher, respectively. As a result, a decrease in speech intelligibility of patients with PD is likely to show different types of errors from the normal group. The results of this research are meaningful in a sense that they could provide the objective standard of speech intelligibility and vowel space parameters.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.2 no.3
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• pp.171-178
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• 2010

This study examined the relationship between speech intelligibility and comprehensibility for hearing impaired children with cochlear implants. Speech intelligibility was measured by orthographic transcription method for acoustic signal at the level of words and sentences. Comprehensibility was evaluated by examining listener's ability to answer questions about the contents of a narrative. Speech samples were collected from 12 speakers(age of 6~15 years) with cochlear implants. For each speaker, 4 different listeners(total of 48 listeners) completed 2 tasks: One task involved making orthographic transcriptions and the other task involved answering comprehension questions. The results of the study were as follows: (1) Speech intelligibility and comprehensibility scores tended to be increased by decreasing of severity. (2) Across all speakers, the relationship was significant between speech intelligibility and comprehensibility scores without considering severity. However, within severity groups, there was the significant relationship between comprehensibility and speech intelligibility only for moderate-severe group. These results suggest that speech intelligibility scores measured by orthographic transcription may not accurately reflect how well listener comprehend speech of children with cochlear implants and therefore, measures of both speech intelligibility and listener comprehension should be considered in evaluating speech ability and information-bearing capability in speakers with cochlear implants.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.39-46
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• 2013

This study examined the effects of phonetic complexity and articulatory severity on Percentage of Correct Consonant (PCC) and speech intelligibility in adults with dysarthria. Speech samples of thirty-two words from APAC (Assessment of Phonology and Articulation of Children) were collected from 38 dysarthric speakers with one of two different levels of articulatory severities (mild or mild-moderate). A PCC and speech intelligibility score was calculated by the 4 levels of phonetic complexity. Two-way mixed ANOVA analysis revealed: (1) the group with mild severity showed significantly higher PCC and speech intelligibility scores than the mild-moderate articulatory severity group, (2) PCC at the phonetic complexity level 4 was significantly lower than those at the other levels and (3) an interaction effect of articulatory severity and phonetic complexity was observed only on the PCC. Pearson correlation analysis demonstrated the degree of correlation between PCC and speech intelligibility varied depending on the level of articulatory severity and phonetic complexity. The clinical implications of the findings were discussed.