• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.121-125
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• 2018

This paper describes procedures of changing and measuring voice quality in terms of jitter. Jitter synthesis method was applied to the TD-PSOLA analysis system of the Praat software. The jitter component is synthesized based on a Gaussian random noise model. The TD-PSOLA re-synthesize process is used to synthesize the modified voice with artificial jitter. Various vocal jitter parameters are used to measure the change in quality caused by artificial systematic jitter change. Synthetic vowels, natural vowels and short sentences are used to check the change in voice quality through the synthesizer model. The results shows that the suggested method is useful for voice quality control in a limited way and can be used to alter the jitter component of voice.

• Korean Journal of Audiology
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.138-145
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• 2021

Background and Objectives: This study aimed to evaluate the audiologic results after cochlear implantation (CI) in older patients and the degree of improvement in their quality of life (QoL). Subjects and Methods: Patients over 65 years old who underwent CI at implant center in Bozyaka Training and Research Hospital were included in this study (n=54; 34 males and 20 females). The control group was patient over 65 years old with normal hearing (n=54; 34 males and 20 females). We administered three questionnaires [World Health Organization Quality of Life-BREF (WHOQOL-BREF), World Health Organization Quality of Life-OLD (WHOQOL-OLD)], and Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS) to evaluate the QoL, CIrelated effects on activities of daily life, and social activities in all the subjects. Moreover, correlations between speech recognition and the QoL scores were evaluated. The duration of implant use and comorbidities were also examined as potential factors affecting QoL. Results: The patients had remarkable improvements (the mean score of postoperative speech perception 75.7%) in speech perception after CI. The scores for the WHOQOL-OLD and WHOQOL-BREF questionnaire responses were similar in both the study and control groups, except those for a two subdomains (social relations and social participation). The patients with longer-term CI had higher scores than those with short-term CI use. In general, the changes in GDS scores were not significant (p<0.05). Conclusions: The treatment of hearing loss with CI conferred significant improvement in patient's QoL (p<0.01). The evaluation of QoL can provide multidimensional insights into a geriatric patient's progress and, therefore, should be considered by audiologists.

• Journal of Audiology & Otology
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.138-145
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• 2021

Background and Objectives: This study aimed to evaluate the audiologic results after cochlear implantation (CI) in older patients and the degree of improvement in their quality of life (QoL). Subjects and Methods: Patients over 65 years old who underwent CI at implant center in Bozyaka Training and Research Hospital were included in this study (n=54; 34 males and 20 females). The control group was patient over 65 years old with normal hearing (n=54; 34 males and 20 females). We administered three questionnaires [World Health Organization Quality of Life-BREF (WHOQOL-BREF), World Health Organization Quality of Life-OLD (WHOQOL-OLD)], and Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS) to evaluate the QoL, CIrelated effects on activities of daily life, and social activities in all the subjects. Moreover, correlations between speech recognition and the QoL scores were evaluated. The duration of implant use and comorbidities were also examined as potential factors affecting QoL. Results: The patients had remarkable improvements (the mean score of postoperative speech perception 75.7%) in speech perception after CI. The scores for the WHOQOL-OLD and WHOQOL-BREF questionnaire responses were similar in both the study and control groups, except those for a two subdomains (social relations and social participation). The patients with longer-term CI had higher scores than those with short-term CI use. In general, the changes in GDS scores were not significant (p<0.05). Conclusions: The treatment of hearing loss with CI conferred significant improvement in patient's QoL (p<0.01). The evaluation of QoL can provide multidimensional insights into a geriatric patient's progress and, therefore, should be considered by audiologists.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.1 no.4
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• pp.105-109
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• 2009

This thesis describes the method for well voice announcement using the TTS(Text-To-Speech) technology in the shop music broadcasting service. Offering a high quality TTS sound service for each shop requires a great expense. According to a report on the architectural acoustics the room acoustic indexes such as reverberation time and early decay time are closely connected with a subjective awareness about acoustics. By using the result the customers will be able to recognize better the voice announcement by applying sound effect to speech files made by TTS. The result of an aural comprehension examination has shown better about almost all of the parameters by applying reverb effect to TTS sound.

• MALSORI
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• no.56
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• pp.225-235
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• 2005

Speech unit concatenation with a large database is presently the most popular method for speech synthesis. In this approach, the mismatches at the unit boundaries are unavoidable and become one of the reasons for quality degradation. This paper proposes an algorithm to reduce undesired discontinuities between the subsequent units. Optimal matching points are calculated in two steps. Firstly, the fullback-Leibler distance measurement is utilized for the spectral matching, then the unit sliding and the overlap windowing are used for the waveform matching. The proposed algorithm is implemented for the corpus-based unit concatenating Korean text-to-speech system that has an automatically labeled database. Experimental results show that our algorithm is fairly better than the raw concatenation or the overlap smoothing method.

• MALSORI
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• no.48
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• pp.93-105
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• 2003

Since telephone channel has bandlimited frequency characteristics, speech signal over the telephone channel shows degraded speech quality. In this paper, we propose an algorithm using neural network to reconstruct wideband speech from its narrowband version. Although single neural network is a good tool for direct mapping, it has difficulty in training for vast and complicated data. To alleviate this problem, we modularize the neural networks based on appropriate clustering of the acoustic space. We also introduce fuzzy computing to compensate for probable misclassification at the cluster boundaries. According to our simulation, the proposed algorithm showed improved performance over the single neural network and conventional codebook mapping method in both objective and subjective evaluations.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Broadcast Engineers Conference
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• 2011.07a
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• pp.85-88
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• 2011

This paper describes a single channel speech enhancement as the pre-processor of automatic speech recognition system. The improvements are based on using optimally modified log-spectra (OM-LSA) gain function with a non-causal a priori signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) estimation. Experimental results show that the proposed method gives better perceptual evaluation of speech quality score (PESQ) and lower log-spectral distance, and also better word accuracy. In the enhancement system, parameters was turned for automatic speech recognition.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.22 no.3E
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• pp.110-112
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• 2003

There have been numerous studies on the enhancement of the noisy speech signal. In this paper, we propose a completely new speech enhancement scheme, that is, a filtering of a dissonant frequency (especially F# in each octave of the tempered scale) based on the fundamental frequency which is developed in frequency domain. In order to evaluate the performance of the proposed enhancement scheme, subjective tests (MOS tests) were conducted. The subjective test results indicate that the proposed method provides a significant gain in audible improvement especially for speech contaminated by colored noise and speaking in a husky voice. Therefore when the filter is employed as a pre-filter for speech enhancement, the output speech quality and intelligibility is greatly enhanced.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.55-63
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• 2005

This paper introduces a 'Hanmal' Korean language diphone database for speech synthesis, which has been publicly available since 1999 in the MBROLA web site and never been properly published in a journal. The diphone database is compatible with the MBROLA programme of high-quality multilingual speech synthesis systems. The usefulness of the diphone database is introduced in the paper. The paper also describes the phonetic and phonological structure of the database, showing the process of creating a text corpus. A machine-readable Korean SAMPA convention for the control data input to the MBROLA application is also suggested. Diphone concatenation and prosody manipulation are performed using the MBR-PSOLA algorithm. A set of segment duration models can be applied to the diphone synthesis of Korean.

• MALSORI
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• no.53
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• pp.129-141
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• 2005

The goal of this research is to improve the quality of reconstructed speech in the Distributed Speech Recognition (DSR) system. For the extended DSR, we estimate the variable Maximum Voiced Frequency (MVF) from Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficient (MFCC) based on Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM), to implement realistic harmonic plus noise model for the excitation signal. For the standard DSR, we also make the voiced/unvoiced decision from MFCC based on GMM because the pitch information is not available in that case. The perceptual test reveals that speech reconstructed by the proposed method is preferred to the one by the conventional methods.