• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.39-51
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• 2021

Based on spontaneous speech data collected in 2020, this study examined the production and perception of Korean lenis, aspirated, and fortis stops. Unlike the controlled experiments of previous studies, lenis and aspirated stops of males in their 30s were not distinguished by voice onset time (VOT) in spontaneous speech. Perceptual experiments were conducted on young females, the leaders of language change. F0 was found to serve as the primary cue for the perception of lenis stops, and then VOT distinguished the aspirated and fortis stops. The fact that the sounds were always perceived as lenis stops when F0 was low, irrespective of whether VOT was short or long, showed that F0 plays an absolute role in the perception of lenis stops. However, in some cases the aspirated and lenis stops were distinguished only by VOT, which does not happen in production. In terms of sound change, disagreement between production and perception systems occurs when sound change is in progress. In particular, when production change precedes perception change, it indicates that the sound change is in its latter stages. Young females still maintain the previous system in perception because the distinction of lenis and aspirated stops by VOT was valid in their parents' generation. In other words, VOT is still used for perception to communicate with other groups.

• MALSORI
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• no.49
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• pp.135-144
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• 2004

In this paper, we make a study of classification normal from abnormal - normal, asthma through analysis of thoracic sound to take use thoracic sound detection system. Thoracic sound detection system has a function to store thoracic sound and analyze the data. The wave shape of thoracic sound is similar to noise and is systematically generated by inhalation and exhalation breathing, therefore, in this paper, to classify asthma sound in thoracic sound, we could discriminate between normal and abnormal case using level crossing rate(LCR) and spectrogram energy rate.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2002.11b
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• pp.511-516
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• 2002

Pitch is a perception related to the subjective frequency that is one of the psychological aspects or attributes of tones. It is also an important factor to determine the sound quality together with loudness and timber. Although the study on pitch has been active in the field of speech communication, but its application to the product sound quality is not yet enough. In this study, the empirical data by Zwicker is made use in the modification of the currently available pitch extraction model based on the place theory. By applying this modified model to various sound samples composed of tonal or banded components, the applicability of the model is suggested. As a demonstration example, the algorithm is used for the sound quality analysis of a product noise having fundamental frequency and harmonics. The result shows that the pitch should be regarded as an important subjective cue in the sound quality analysis.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 1997.10a
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• pp.286-292
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• 1997

Sound quality is becoming the major concern in passenger vehicle. The study on it has been done recently but it is not good enough. In order to improve the sound quality in passenger vehicle, so many noise sources must be considered and human feeling to the noise also be taken into account. In this paper, the sound quality was analyzed by vehicle road test which was carried out with varying the traveling speed. As basic factors for sound quality, only objective factors are considered such as loudness, sharpness, speech intelligibility, sound pressure level ... etc. The relations between sound pressure level and other factors are discussed from a point of view of traveling speed dependency. The frequency dependency of sound quality factor is also analyzed by frequency analysis.

• Korean Journal of Audiology
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.80-88
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• 2021

Background and Objectives: Non-linear frequency compression (NLFC) technology compresses and shifts higher frequencies into a lower frequency area that has better residual hearing. Because consonants are uttered in the high-frequency area, NLFC could provide better speech understanding. The aim of this study was to investigate the clinical effectiveness of NLFC technology on the perception of speech and music in patients with high-frequency hearing loss. Subjects and Methods: Twelve participants with high-frequency hearing loss were tested in a counter-balanced order, and had two weeks of daily experience with NLFC set on/off prior to testing. Performance was repeatedly evaluated with consonant tests in quiet and noise environments, speech perception in noise, music perception and acceptableness of sound quality rating tasks. Additionally, two questionnaires (the Abbreviated Profile of Hearing Aid Benefit and the Korean version of the International Outcome Inventory-Hearing Aids) were administered. Results: Consonant and speech perception improved with hearing aids (NLFC on/off conditions), but there was no significant difference between NLFC on and off states. Music perception performances revealed no notable difference among unaided and NLFC on and off states. The benefits and satisfaction ratings between NLFC on and off conditions were also not significantly different, based on questionnaires, however great individual variability preferences were noted. Conclusions: Speech perception as well as music perception both in quiet and noise environments was similar between NLFC on and off states, indicating that real world benefits from NLFC technology may be limited in Korean adult hearing aid users.

• Journal of Audiology & Otology
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.80-88
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• 2021

Background and Objectives: Non-linear frequency compression (NLFC) technology compresses and shifts higher frequencies into a lower frequency area that has better residual hearing. Because consonants are uttered in the high-frequency area, NLFC could provide better speech understanding. The aim of this study was to investigate the clinical effectiveness of NLFC technology on the perception of speech and music in patients with high-frequency hearing loss. Subjects and Methods: Twelve participants with high-frequency hearing loss were tested in a counter-balanced order, and had two weeks of daily experience with NLFC set on/off prior to testing. Performance was repeatedly evaluated with consonant tests in quiet and noise environments, speech perception in noise, music perception and acceptableness of sound quality rating tasks. Additionally, two questionnaires (the Abbreviated Profile of Hearing Aid Benefit and the Korean version of the International Outcome Inventory-Hearing Aids) were administered. Results: Consonant and speech perception improved with hearing aids (NLFC on/off conditions), but there was no significant difference between NLFC on and off states. Music perception performances revealed no notable difference among unaided and NLFC on and off states. The benefits and satisfaction ratings between NLFC on and off conditions were also not significantly different, based on questionnaires, however great individual variability preferences were noted. Conclusions: Speech perception as well as music perception both in quiet and noise environments was similar between NLFC on and off states, indicating that real world benefits from NLFC technology may be limited in Korean adult hearing aid users.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.35-45
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• 2002

A simple algorithm for discriminating voiced sounds in a speech is proposed. In addition to low-frequency energy and zero-crossing rate (ZCR), both of which have been widely used in the past for identifying voiced sounds, the proposed algorithm incorporates pitch variation to improve the discrimination rate. Based on TIMIT corpus, evaluation result shows an improvement of 13% in the discrimination of voiced phonemes over that of the traditional algorithm using only energy and ZCR.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• 1998.06a
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• pp.599-602
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• 1998

In this paper, a speech enhancement method based on phonemic properties and masking effect is propsoed. It is a modified type of spectral subtraction wherein the spectral sharpening process is exploited in unvoiced state considering the phonemic properties. The masking threshold is used to remove the residual noise. The proposed spectral subtraction shows similar performance as that of the classical spectral subtraction method in view of the SNR. But by the prposed scheme, the unvoiced sound region is shown to exhibit relatively less signal distortion in the enhanced speech.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2007.05a
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• pp.39-40
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• 2007

For efficient interaction between human and robots, speech interface is a core problem especially in noisy and reverberant conditions. This paper analyzes main issues of spoken language interface for humanoid robots, such as sound source localization, voice activity detection, and speaker recognition.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.109-119
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• 2014

This article represents a first step in a large study aimed at elucidating the relationship between production and perception involved in sound change of /o/ in (Seoul) Korean. In this paper we present the results of a production study and a perception experiment. For the production study we examined vowel production data of 20 young adult speakers, measuring the first and second formants, then conducted a discriminant analysis based on those values. In terms of their F1-F2 values, the distribution of /o/ and /u/ were close, and even overlapping in some circumstances, which is consistent with the literature. This tendency was more apparent among the female speakers than the males. Moreover, with the females' distributions, /o/ was frequently categorized as /u/, suggesting that the direction of the sound change is indeed increasing from /o/ to /u/. Next, to investigate the effects of this proximity on perception, we used the production data of five randomly selected speakers from the production study as stimuli for a perception experiment in which 21 young adult native speakers of (Seoul) Korean performed a vowel identification task and provided a Goodness rating on a 5-point scale. We found that while rates of correctness were high, when these correctness scores were weighted by the Goodness rating, these "weighted correctness" scores were lower in some cases, indicating a degree of confusion in distinguishing between the two vowels.