An accurate fundamental frequency (F0) estimation method for non-stationary, speech-like sounds is proposed based on the differential properties of the instantaneous frequencies of two sets of filter outputs. A specific type of fixed points of mapping from the filter center frequency to the output instantaneous frequency provides frequencies of the constituent sinusoidal components of the input...

SUMMARY This paper proposes a robust method for estimating the fundamental frequency (F0) in real environments. It is assumed that the spectral structure of real environmental noise varies momentarily and its energy does not distribute evenly in the time-frequency domain. Therefore, segmenting a spec-trogram of speech mixed with environmental noise into narrow time-frequency regions will produc...

This study investigated the fundamental frequency (F0) discrimination of complex tones by children. Children aged 3, 4, 5, 6, 10 and young adults participated in the test. They were asked to indicate whether two pairs of tones were the same or different. The F0 discrimination ability of participants was examined with reference to standard tones of 120 and 250 Hz F0. The results showed children’...

A comparative evaluation of several pitch determination algorithms (PDAs) is presented. Fundamental frequency estimates, F0, are compared with laryngeal frequency estimates , Lx. An algorithm is presented which enables Lx contours to be generated from laryngograph data. We seek the most accurate method of F0 extraction in order to minimise errors propagating into subsequent prosodic analysis. T...

A significant part of the non-linguistic information carried in speech refers to the speaker and his/her internal state. This study investigates sixteen features based on fundamental frequency of speech F0 in order to detect stress in speakers. The most effective features resulting from experiments are presented here. The total frequency ranges of F0 across specific short-time speech segments c...

Major syntactic boundaries are often accompanied by a rise in the phrase component of the fundamental frequency (F0) contour. Detecting such rises, therefore, can be signi cantly helpful to the speech recognition process. We developed a method to detect syntactic boundaries with phrasecomponent rise (henceforth, phrase boundaries), based on the compression of the accent component of the F0 cont...

A speech separation system is described in which sources are represented in a joint interaural time difference-fundamental frequency (ITD-F0) cue space. Traditionally, recurrent timing neural networks (RTNNs) have been used only to extract periodicity information; in this study, this type of network is extended in two ways. Firstly, a coincidence detector layer is introduced, each node of which...

Most previous research on the effect of alcohol on speech has focused on read speech. On that basis, prosodic changes have been demonstrated. Some findings, however, were not unanimous, e.g. those on speaking fundamental frequency (F0) and F0 variability. Another shortcoming of most previous studies is that they use a very small number of subjects. [3]. The present study is based on an experime...

Prosodic features of the speech signal include fundamental frequency (F0), intensity and duration. In order to study the development of prosody independent from segmental aspects of speech, we considered the question–statement contrast. In English, adults mark the contrast using changes in fundamental frequency, duration and intensity, with F0 being the most prominent cue. Declarative questions...

The vowels of European languages are primarily distinguished by the frequencies of the two lowest formants in the spectrum of the output sound, which are in turn produced by the frequencies (R1 and R2) of the first two resonances of the vocal tract [1]. Under some conditions, many singers use the strategy of resonance tuning; i.e. they tune a resonance to a harmonic of the fundamental frequency...