Conversational quality evaluation of artificial bandwidth extension of telephone speech.
Artificial bandwidth extension methods have been developed to improve the quality and intelligibility of narrowband telephone speech and to reduce the difference with wideband speech. Such methods have commonly been evaluated with objective measures or subjective listening-only tests, but conversational evaluations have been rare. This article presents a conversational evaluation of two methods for the artificial bandwidth extension of telephone speech. Bandwidth-extended narrowband speech is compared with narrowband and wideband speech in a test setting including a simulated telephone connection, realistic conversation tasks, and various background noise conditions. The responses of the subjects indicate that speech processed with one of the methods is preferred to narrowband speech in noise, but wideband speech is superior to both narrowband and bandwidth-extended speech. Bandwidth extension was found to be beneficial for telephone conversation in noisy listening conditions.
Department of Signal Processing and Acoustics, Aalto University, PO Box 13000, FI-00076 Aalto, Finland. hannu.pulakka@aalto.fi
Hannu
H
Pulakka
Laura
L
Laaksonen
Santeri
S
Yrttiaho
Ville
V
Myllylä
Paavo
P
Alku
D000328:Adult; D000465:Algorithms; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001302:Audiometry, Speech; D003142:Communication; D032882:Comprehension; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009622:Noise / Q000009:adverse effects; D010470:Perceptual Masking; D012815:Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted; D013061:Speech Acoustics; D013065:Speech Intelligibility; D013067:Speech Perception; D013068:Speech Production Measurement; D013689:Telephone; D055815:Young Adult