The Lombard Effect's influence on automatic speaker verification systems and methods for its compensation

Roman Goldenberg, Arnon Cohen, Ilan Shallom

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

4 Scopus citations

Abstract

Speaker identification/verification applications have progressed significantly during the last few years. Performance levels of between 70% - 99% success in speaker recognition systems are normal, depending on the type of application and quality of the signal. Several techniques for robust speaker recognition have been developed. Until now, however, the problem posed by variations in speech characteristics due to acoustical noise has not been thoroughly investigated in the context of speaker recognition. The change a noisy acoustic environment can produce in speech signal parameters is known as the "Lombard Effect." In this paper the Lombard Effect's influence on speaker verification system performance is investigated and several compensation methods are proposed. The verification system is based on a 24 Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) and speech feature orders of 12 to 60. It was found that, based on the mean Equal Error Rate (EER), verification performance deteriorated by 10.1% (from 3.8% to 13.9%) relative to speech veriflcation in a normal environment due to the Lombard Effect. Two types of Lombard Effect compensation methods are proposed. The first is based on robust speech features that are resistant to the Lombard Effect. The second is based on studying how the Lombard Effect changes speech feature and then transforming the Lombard affected speech back to normal speech. The proposed methods significantly reduce speaker veriflcation system error rates. An improvement in the EER of up to 5.4% (from 13.5% to 8.5%) was achieved,

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationITRE 2006 - 4th International Conference on Information Technology
Subtitle of host publicationResearch and Education, Proceedings
PublisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
Pages233-237
Number of pages5
ISBN (Print)1424408598, 9781424408597
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Jan 2006
EventITRE 2006 - 4th International Conference on Information Technology: Research and Education - Tel-Aviv, Israel
Duration: 17 Oct 200618 Oct 2006

Publication series

NameITRE 2006 - 4th International Conference on Information Technology: Research and Education, Proceedings

Conference

ConferenceITRE 2006 - 4th International Conference on Information Technology: Research and Education
Country/TerritoryIsrael
CityTel-Aviv
Period17/10/0618/10/06

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General Computer Science
  • Information Systems
  • Information Systems and Management

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