Automatically Derived Units in the Speech Processing

Abstract

Current systems for recognition, synthesis, very low bit-rate (VLBR) coding and text-independent speaker verification rely on sub-word units determined using phonetic knowledge. This paper presents an alternative to this approach - determination of speech units using AUSP (Automatic Language Independent Speech Processing) tools. Experimental results for speaker-dependent VLBR coding are reported on two databases: average rate of 120 bps for unit encoding was achieved. In verification, this approach was tested during 1998's NIST-NSA evaluation campaign with a MLP-based scoring system.