Speech Analysis, Synthesis and Perception

This book has its origin in a letter. In November of 1959, the late Prof. Dr. WERNER MEYER-EpPLER wrote to me, asking if I would contribute to a series he was planning on Communication. His book " Grundlagen und Anwendungen der Informationstheorie" was to serve as the initial volume of the series. After protracted consideration, I agreed to undertake the job provided it could be done outside my regular duties at the Bell Telephone Laboratories. Shortly afterwards, I received additional responsibilities in my research organization, and felt that I could not conveniently pursue the manuscript. Consequently, except for the preparation of a detailed outline, the writing was delayed for about a year and a half. In the interim, Professor MEYER-EpPLER suffered a fatal illness, and Professors H. WOLTER and W. D. KEIDEL assumed the editorial re­ sponsibilities for the book series. The main body of this material was therefore written as a leisurc­ time project in the years 1962 and 1963. The complete draft of the manuscript was duplicated and circulated to colleagues in three parts during 1963. Valuable comments and criticisms were obtained, revisions made, and the manuscript submitted to the publisher in March of 1964. The mechanics of printing have filled the remaining time. If the reader finds merit in the work, it will be owing in great measure to the people with whom I have had the good fortune to be associated.

I. Voice Communication.- 1.1. The Advent of Telephony.- 1.2. Efficient Transmission of Speech.- 1.3. Capacity of the Human Channel.- 1.4. Analysis-Synthesis Telephony: An Approach to Improved Efficiency.- II. The Mechanism of Speech Production.- 2.1. Physiology of the Vocal Apparatus.- 2.2. The Sounds of Speech.- 2.3. Quantitative Description of Speech.- III. Acoustical Properties of the Vocal System.- 3.1. The Vocal Tract as an Acoustic System.- 3.2. Equivalent Circuit for the Lossy Cylindrical Pipe.- 3.3. The Radiation Load at the Mouth and Nostrils.- 3.4. Spreading of Sound About the Head.- 3.5. The Source for Voiced Sounds.- 3.6. The Source for Noise and Transient Excitation of the Tract..- 3.7. Some Characteristics of Vocal Tract Transmission.- 3.8. Fundamentals of Speech and Hearing in Analysis-Synthesis Telephony.- IV. The Ear and Hearing.- 4.1. Mechanism of the Ear.- 4.2. Computational Models for Ear Operation.- 4.3. Illustrative Relations Between Subjective and Physiological Behavior.- V. Techniques for Speech Analysis.- 5.1. Spectral Analysis of Speech.- 5.2. Formant Analysis of Speech.- 5.3. Analysis of Voice Pitch.- 5.4. Articulatory Analysis of the Vocal Mechanism.- 5.5. Automatic Recognition of Speech.- 5.6. Automatic Speaker Recognition.- VI. Speech Synthesis.- 6.1. Mechanical Speaking Machines; Historical Efforts.- 6.2. Electrical Methods for Speech Synthesis.- VII. Perception of Speech and Speech-Like Sounds.- 7.1. Differential vs Absolute Discrimination.- 7.2. Differential Discriminations Along Signal Dimensions Related to Speech.- 7.3. Absolute Discrimination of Speech and Speech-Like Sounds...- 7.4. Effects of Context and Vocabulary Upon Speech Perception.- 7.5. The Perceptual Units of Speech.- 7.6. Articulation Tests for Transmission System Evaluation.- 7.7. Calculating Intelligibility Scores from System Response and Noise Level: The Articulation Index.- 7.8. Supplementary Sensory Channels for Speech Perception.- VIII. Systems for Analysis-Synthesis Telephony.- 8.1. Channel Vocoders.- 8.2. Reduced Redundancy Channel Vocoders.- 8.3. Voice-Excited Vocoders.- 8.4. Correlation Vocoders.- 8.5. Formant Vocoders.- 8.6. Articulatory Vocoders.- 8.7. Other Methods for Bandwidth Reduction.- References.- Author Index.