Towards objective evaluation of perceived roughness and breathiness: an approach based on mel-frequency cepstral analysis.
Within this paper, the authors report on an experiment on automatic labelling of perceived voice roughness (R) and breathiness (B), according to the GRBAS scale. The main objective of the experiment has not been to correlate objective measures to perceived R and B, but to automatically evaluate R and B. For this purpose, a system has been trained that extracts the first mel-frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCC) of available sustained vowel phonations. Afterwards, a classifier has been trained to estimate the corresponding degrees of roughness and breathiness. The obtained results reveal a significant correlation between subjective and automatic labelling, hence indicating the feasibility of objective evaluation of voice quality by means of perceptually meaningful measures.
Sáenz-Lechón
Nicolás
N
Circuits & Systems Engineering Department, Escuela Universitaria de Ingeniería Técnica de Telecomunicación, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid-Campus Sur, Carretera de Valencia km 7, 28031 Madrid, Spain.
Fraile
Rubén
R
Godino-Llorente
Juan I
JI
Fernández-Baíllo
Roberto
R
Osma-Ruiz
Víctor
V
Gutiérrez-Arriola
Juana M
JM
Arias-Londoño
Julián D
JD
D000328:Adult; D000465:Algorithms; D001331:Automation; D019992:Databases as Topic; D005240:Feasibility Studies; D005260:Female; D005583:Fourier Analysis; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010363:Pattern Recognition, Automated; D010699:Phonation; D011237:Predictive Value of Tests; D012815:Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted; D013018:Sound Spectrography; D013061:Speech Acoustics; D013068:Speech Production Measurement; D014832:Voice Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000503:physiopathology; D014833:Voice Quality