• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.29-38
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• 1989

Detection of an underwater target by acoustic wave raises various difficulties due to unpredictable noise interference which originates from clutter, reverberation, and variations of medium characteristics with time and location. The SNR and the range resolution of conventional SONAR systems using a matched filter are generally poor, since the latter is optimum only in the additive white noise case. Furthermore, it cannot compensate for variations of the detection level which are responsible for the resultant detection errors. In this paper, the unpredictable interferences are compensated for by using an adaptive filter. It recursively estimates the channel impulse response based on the received echo signal. In the low noise environments, the estimated impulse response is close to the true one, providing a good range resolution, and a matched filter is used subsequently for the purpose of detection. It is shown through computer simulation that good performance can be achieved via the two steps of filtering. Also, the detection level remains unchanged without any additional provisions. Finally, we present the characteristics of the employed adaptive filter parameters.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.91-100
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• 2023

Reverberation time (T60) is a typical acoustic parameter that provides information about reverberation. Since the impacts of reverberation vary depending on the frequency bands even in the same space, frequency-dependent (FD) T60, which offers detailed insights into the acoustic environments, can be useful. However, most conventional blind T60 estimation methods, which estimate the T60 from speech signals, focus on fullband T60 estimation, and a few blind FDT60 estimation methods commonly show poor performance in the low-frequency bands. This paper introduces a modified approach based on Attentive pooling based Weighted Sum of Spectral Decay Rates (AWSSDR), previously proposed for blind T60 estimation, by extending its target from fullband T60 to FDT60. The experimental results show that the proposed method outperforms conventional blind FDT60 estimation methods on the acoustic characterization of environments (ACE) challenge evaluation dataset. Notably, it consistently exhibits excellent estimation performance in all frequency bands. This demonstrates that the mechanism of the AWSSDR method is valuable for blind FDT60 estimation because it reflects the FD variations in the impact of reverberation, aggregating information about FDT60 from the speech signal by processing the spectral decay rates associated with the physical properties of reverberation in each frequency band.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.45-51
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• 2023

Voice issues such as voice weakness that arise with age can have social and emotional impacts, potentially leading to feelings of isolation and depression. This study aimed to investigate the changes in acoustic characteristics resulting from aging, focusing on voice quality and spoken fluency. To this end, tasks involving sustained vowel phonation and paragraph reading were recorded for 20 elderly and 20 young participants. Voice-quality-related variables, including F0, jitter, shimmer, and Cepstral Peak Prominence (CPP) values, were analyzed along with speech-fluency-related variables, such as average syllable duration (ASD), articulation rate (AR), and speech rate (SR). The results showed that in voice quality-related measurements, F0 was higher for the elderly and voice quality was diminished, as indicated by increased jitter, shimmer, and lower CPP levels. Speech fluency analysis also demonstrated that the elderly spoke more slowly, as indicated by all ASD, AR, and SR measurements. Correlation analysis between voice quality and speech fluency showed a significant relationship between shimmer and CPP values and between ASD and SR values. This suggests that changes in spoken fluency can be identified early by measuring the variations in voice quality. This study further highlights the reciprocal relationship between voice quality and spoken fluency, emphasizing that deterioration in one can affect the other.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.87-103
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• 2004

This study investigates Korean listeners' perception of the English stop epenthesis between the sonorant and fricative segments. Specifically this study investigates 1) how often English epenthetic stops are perceived by native Korean listeners, given the fact that Korean does not allow consonant clusters in codas; and 2) whether perception of the epenthetic stops, which are optional phonetic variations, not phonemes, could be improved without any explicit training. 120 English non-words with a mono-syllable structure of CVC1C2, where C1=/m, n, $\eta$, 1/, and C2=/s, $\theta$, $\int$/, were given to two groups of native Korean listeners, and they were asked to detect the target stops such as [p], [t], and [k]. The number of their responses were computed to determine how often listeners succeed in recovering the string of segments produced by the native English speaker. The results of the present study show that English epenthetic stops are poorly identified by native Korean listeners with low English proficiency, even in the case where stimuli with strong acoustic cues are provided with, but perception of epenthetic stops is closely related with listeners' English proficiency, showing the possibility of the improvement of perception. It further shows that perception of epenthetic stops shows asymmetry between coronal and non-coronal consonants.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.103-113
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• 2016

This paper aims to propose articulatory features as novel predictors for automatic pronunciation assessment of English produced by Korean learners. Based on the distinctive feature theory, where phonemes are represented as a set of articulatory/phonetic properties, we propose articulatory Goodness-Of-Pronunciation(aGOP) features in terms of the corresponding articulatory attributes, such as nasal, sonorant, anterior, etc. An English speech corpus spoken by Korean learners is used in the assessment modeling. In our system, learners' speech is forced aligned and recognized by using the acoustic and pronunciation models derived from the WSJ corpus (native North American speech) and the CMU pronouncing dictionary, respectively. In order to compute aGOP features, articulatory models are trained for the corresponding articulatory attributes. In addition to the proposed features, various features which are divided into four categories such as RATE, SEGMENT, SILENCE, and GOP are applied as a baseline. In order to enhance the assessment modeling performance and investigate the weights of the salient features, relevant features are extracted by using Best Subset Selection(BSS). The results show that the proposed model using aGOP features outperform the baseline. In addition, analysis of relevant features extracted by BSS reveals that the selected aGOP features represent the salient variations of Korean learners of English. The results are expected to be effective for automatic pronunciation error detection, as well.

• MALSORI
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• no.38
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• pp.71-97
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• 1999

In this paper I have surveyed vowel phonemes in a variety of English accents and have proposed the vowel systems of English. The English accents covered in this paper include General American English, Northeastern American English, Western American English, Southern British English, Northern British English, Scottish English, Southern Irish English, Northern Irish English, Australian English, and New Zealand English. The vowel systems proposed here reflect the acoustic information of vowels and phonological aspects of English. This paper offers an Optimality Theory-based analysis of the English vowel systems by appealing to independently motivated constraints. This paper, following Flemming(1995), makes an assumption that the vowel system in question is selected in output as an optimal candidate by a given constraint ranking, the assumption which is different from the view that the vowel system is fixed in input. The analysis proposed here gives an answer to why a specific vowel system is selected and why dialectal variations come about. It is shown in this paper that the vowel system selected in a specific dialect comes from an optimal satisfaction of a given constraint ranking and that dialectal differences result from dynamic permutations of the same constraints. The constraint-based analysis proffered here accounts well for the similarities and differences among dialects in regard to the vowel system.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Process Engineers
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.28-37
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• 2004

An on-line monitoring system of endmill failure such as weal, chipping, and fracture is developed using AE, cutting force Characteristic variations of AE and cutting force signals due to endmill failure are identified as follows. When endmill fracture occurs, AE count rate shows a rapid Increase in conjunction with a subsequent decrease while a standard deviation of the principal cutting force Increases significantly. The increase of AE count rate precedes the Increase of standard deviation of principal cutting force. Chipping results in relatively small increase and decrease of AE count rate without any significant variation of the cutting force Gradual increase of AE count rate and mean principal cutting force are Identified to be related with the wear of cutter. A cutter fracture detection algorithm is developed based on the present results. The signals me normalized to enhance the applicability of the algorithm to Wide those of fresh cutters, and qualitative characteristics of AE signals encountered at the moment of fracture are employed. It is demonstrated that the algorithm can detect the cutter fracture successfully.

• Journal of Energy Engineering
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.139-144
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• 2003

Augmentation of CHF by ultrasonic vibration in water pool is experimentally investigated under pool boiling condition. The experiments are carried out using copper coated plates and distilled water. Measurements of CHF on flat plate heated surface were made with and without ultrasonic wave and with variations in inclined angle of the surface and water subcooling. Experimental apparatus consists of a bath, power supply, test section, ultrasonic generator, and data acquisition system. The measurements show that ultrasonic wave enhances CHF and its extent is dependent upon inclination angle as well as water subcooling. The rate of increase in CHF increases with an increase in water subcooling while it decreases with an increase in inclination angle. Visual observation shows that the cause of CHF augmentation is closely related with the dynamic behavior of bubble generation and departure in acoustic field.

• Transactions of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.153-159
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• 2010

This work focuses on finding a method to reduce the noise of a hermetic reciprocating compressor during start-up using an acoustical analysis. The noise of compressor during start-up, which is a higher level than that of a normal operating condition, has transient and non-stationary characteristics. The acoustical analysis of compressor cavity is performed to find an effective method to reduce the noise level. In the acoustical analysis, the shape variations of frequency response function in the neighborhood of resonances are tested for three parameters: the height of remained oil, the suction position of refrigerant and the position of driving part. As a conclusion of this result, to reduce the emission noise of compressor during start-up, the height of remained oil should be kept at 16 mm, the refrigerant should be sucked at the cross point of nodal lines of X and Y directional cavity modes, and the driving part should be positioned in the center of cavity.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.121-130
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• 2014

This study investigates the acoustic property of aspiration realized in English voiceless stops of /Cr/ and /sCr/ clusters. VOT is measured from stops in these clusters produced by two groups; one from native speakers of English and the other from Korean native speakers. Aspiration of stops in different types of clusters is compared to various phonological factors such as location of stress, syllable type, and position in word. Pursuing the idea that phonetic realization is correlated with phonological representation, attempts are made to account for the gradient nature of aspiration of stops on the basis of syllable structure at the phonetic level, which may vary in the wake of resyllabification. Voiceless stops in /Cr/ and /sCr/ clusters are further compared to results obtained in the previous study on /sC/ cluster. Variations in aspiration are also characterized in terms of segmental precedence relation of stops in the clusters, namely, post-[s], pre-[r], or both.