Relaxation-based speech labeling

Abstract

It was revealed that a trained human spectrogram reader could perform accurate speech labeling, and that accuracy was based on the flexibility of his/her decision process using many kinds of spectrographic features [S. Katagiri, SP87-115, IEICE Tech. Rep. (1988)]. In this paper, a new flexible speech labeling system that simulates the trained reader capability is proposed. The main task of the system is to apply the trial-and-error process used in a human reader's labeling work. Therefore, a relaxation method is adopted here [S. Katagiri, 2-1-19, A. S. J. Spring Meeting (1988)]. The system consists of three parts: an acoustic analyzer, a verifier, and a supervisor. In the acoustic analyzer, many kinds of acoustic feature candidates, e.g., formant and pitch frequencies, are calculated. In the verifier, possible speech labels are verified. The supervisor, with a behavior principle based on the relaxation method, controls the whole system. Experimental results show that the system's performance is comparable to a human reader's performance and that very accurate labels are automatically created.