A Speech Quality and Intelligibility Assessment Project Using Google Voice

Ying Yu

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Conference: 2014 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Indianapolis, Indiana
Publication Date: June 15, 2014
Start Date: June 15, 2014
End Date: June 18, 2014
ISSN: 2153-5965
Conference Session: Projects in ECE
Tagged Division: Electrical and Computer
Page Count: 11
Page Numbers: 24.104.1 - 24.104.11
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--19996
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/19996
Download Count: 784

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Paper Authors

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Ying Yu University of Hartford

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Dr. Ying Yu received her B.Eng. from Fudan University, Shanghai, China, in 2000. She received her M.Eng. and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Brown University, R.I., USA, in 2003 and 2007, respectively. Since 2008, she has been teaching at the University of Hartford. Her current research interests are audio and speech signal processing, acoustic scene classification, speaker identification and verification, and teaching with new educational methods, including peer instruction, video games, and state-of-the-art CAD tools.

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Abstract

A Speech Quality and Intelligibility Assessment Project Using Google VoiceAbstractIn this paper, a speech quality and intelligibility assessment project using Google Voice isintroduced. Speech quality and intelligibility assessment is an essential topic in any audio andspeech signal processing course, which is widely offered as a senior elective or graduate levelcourse in the electrical engineering curriculum. Speech quality and intelligibility assessment hasbecome an extremely important topic due to the increasing demand in areas such as digitalprotocol analysis, Dolby-dts compliance analysis, audio device testing, etc.Traditionally, one of the biggest challenges in studying speech quality and intelligibilityassessment is the availability of real-life data. The voicemail feature of the Google Voice serviceallows users to download their own voicemails which are real Voice-over-Internet-Protocol(VoIP) speech. The voicemails are sampled at 11025Hz and compressed as MPEG audio layerIII (mp3). Google Voice also offers automatic transcription of the voicemails, which offers greatmaterial for students to examine the effects of vocabulary and contextual information on theintelligibility of speech.The speech quality and intelligibility assessment project introduced here includes three stages. Instage 1, students create a speech data bank using their own voice. Each student creates two setsof recordings. For the first set of recordings, they read the famous “rainbow passage” usingcontinuous speech. For the second set of recordings, they read a randomly selected group ofwords in the classic Modified Rhyme Test (MRT) using discrete speech. For each reading, theysimultaneously record their speech using a close talking microphone on their own PC, and at thesame time through a cellphone and record their speech using Google Voice’s voicemail system.After uploading their own recordings onto a commonly shared webpage (e.g. Blackboard’s ‘fileexchange’ page), students have access to each other’s recordings, which comprise a completespeech database including both the VoIP degraded speech and the clean reference speech. Instage 2, students subjectively assess the speech quality and speech intelligibility of eachrecording using the Mean Opinion Score (MOS) system. In stage 3, students create their ownMatlab programs to assess the speech quality and speech intelligibility of the recordingsobjectively. The algorithm used is similar to the Perceptual Evaluation of Speech Quality(PESQ) standard which is a legacy industry standard for objective voice quality testing.Students’ feedback in terms of their experience using Google Voice and their learningexperience are presented. The instructor’s own observations and conclusions, and future plan arepresented at the end.

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Yu, Y. (2014, June), A Speech Quality and Intelligibility Assessment Project Using Google Voice Paper presented at 2014 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Indianapolis, Indiana. 10.18260/1-2--19996

TY - CPAPER
AB - A Speech Quality and Intelligibility Assessment Project Using Google VoiceAbstractIn this paper, a speech quality and intelligibility assessment project using Google Voice isintroduced. Speech quality and intelligibility assessment is an essential topic in any audio andspeech signal processing course, which is widely offered as a senior elective or graduate levelcourse in the electrical engineering curriculum. Speech quality and intelligibility assessment hasbecome an extremely important topic due to the increasing demand in areas such as digitalprotocol analysis, Dolby-dts compliance analysis, audio device testing, etc.Traditionally, one of the biggest challenges in studying speech quality and intelligibilityassessment is the availability of real-life data. The voicemail feature of the Google Voice serviceallows users to download their own voicemails which are real Voice-over-Internet-Protocol(VoIP) speech. The voicemails are sampled at 11025Hz and compressed as MPEG audio layerIII (mp3). Google Voice also offers automatic transcription of the voicemails, which offers greatmaterial for students to examine the effects of vocabulary and contextual information on theintelligibility of speech.The speech quality and intelligibility assessment project introduced here includes three stages. Instage 1, students create a speech data bank using their own voice. Each student creates two setsof recordings. For the first set of recordings, they read the famous “rainbow passage” usingcontinuous speech. For the second set of recordings, they read a randomly selected group ofwords in the classic Modified Rhyme Test (MRT) using discrete speech. For each reading, theysimultaneously record their speech using a close talking microphone on their own PC, and at thesame time through a cellphone and record their speech using Google Voice’s voicemail system.After uploading their own recordings onto a commonly shared webpage (e.g. Blackboard’s ‘fileexchange’ page), students have access to each other’s recordings, which comprise a completespeech database including both the VoIP degraded speech and the clean reference speech. Instage 2, students subjectively assess the speech quality and speech intelligibility of eachrecording using the Mean Opinion Score (MOS) system. In stage 3, students create their ownMatlab programs to assess the speech quality and speech intelligibility of the recordingsobjectively. The algorithm used is similar to the Perceptual Evaluation of Speech Quality(PESQ) standard which is a legacy industry standard for objective voice quality testing.Students’ feedback in terms of their experience using Google Voice and their learningexperience are presented. The instructor’s own observations and conclusions, and future plan arepresented at the end.
AU - Ying Yu
CY - Indianapolis, Indiana
DA - 2014/06/15
PB - ASEE Conferences
TI - A Speech Quality and Intelligibility Assessment Project Using Google Voice
UR - https://peer.asee.org/19996
DO - 10.18260/1-2--19996
ER -