Newsgroups: comp.speech
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From: dismukes@newshost  (Mart Dismukes)
Subject: Re: Objective Speech Quality Measure
Message-ID: <931119122839@are114.lds.loral.com>
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Organization: Loral Data Systems
References: <1993Nov15.213523.7166@mcshub.dcss.mcmaster.ca>
Date: Fri, 19 Nov 1993 17:28:39 GMT

In article <1993Nov15.213523.7166@mcshub.dcss.mcmaster.ca> mcarthur@nimios.eng.mcmaster.ca (Dean McArthur) writes:

>    I am looking for an Objective Measure of Speech Quality (OSQ). I hope to use
>    the OSQ procedure in place of speech-intelligibility testing during the 
>    development of a communications system I am involved with. Any suggestions on 
>    references or available algorithms would be appreciated. 
    
>    - Dean
    
Are you talking about the quality of natural speech that has been processed    
or the intelligibility of a speech synthesis system?  If your talking about
speech that has been processed (e.g. digitized, compressed, decompressed)
then you may want to consider the Speech Transmission Index (STI).  It was
originally developed to quantify the effects of acoustical properties of
rooms and auditoria on speech intelligibility, but we have successfully used
it to quantify the effects of different CODEC compression schemes.  It
is based on examining the Modulation Transfer Function (MTF) of the system
in octave bands and weighting the results by the importance of the bands
for speech intelligibility.  I would be interested in hearing about any
other OSQs you come up with.

References:
        Steeneken, H J M and Houtgast, T "A physical method for measuring
        speech transmission quality", J Acoust. Soc. Amer. vol 67 (1980)

        IEC Report 268-16 "The objective rating of speech intelligibility
        in auditoria byt eh "RASTI" method"

        Rife, D and Vanderkooy, J "Transfer function measurement with
        maximum legth sequences", J Audio Engr. Soc. (JAES) vol 37 (1989)

Mart D.


--
Mart Dismukes           Phone 1-813-371-0811 X-5311
Loral Data Systems      Fax   1-813-378-6773 
P.O. Box 3041           mart_dismukes@lds.loral.com
Sarasota, FL 34230      Can't speak for Loral

