Ute Jekosch

Assigning Meaning to Sounds — Semiotics in the Context of Product-Sound Design

Sound design constructs audibility of the world. Sounds carry information about the world. When listening to sounds, communication takes place. These are well-known facts for speech sounds, but it is also true for other types of sounds such as music or product sounds. In principle, each acoustic event can be perceived as a sign carrier through which information about the world is communicated. In its ultimate sense, sound designers are engineers of communication. To be successful, they have to take design decisions on the basis of how listeners perceive sounds and of what kind of communication takes place during this event. Suitable sound design requires a special view on acoustic/auditory communication. Among other sciences, semiotics deals with this field.

A Structured Way of Looking at the Performance of Text-to-Speech Systems

Via the COCOSDA Bulletin Board an extensive questionnaire was distributed in 1993, upon which 16 reactions have been received. Almost all these reactions were very interesting and detailed. They contain a wealth of ideas and suggestions. In this chapter we combine suggestions from the questionnaire respondents with the knowledge and experience collected in various projects (SPIN, SAM(-A), Eagles, and (Euro)COCOSDA), into a new approach for a structured way of evaluating the performance of text-to-speech systems. The basic idea is to define a set of key words/descriptors that specify the system under study, with special emphasis on its application. In a similar way the available and to-be-developed tests should be characterized. System and application can then be linked, in a matrix way, to the suite of tests, and a proper selection can then be made, or it might become apparent that additional specific tests are still required.

Scenarios for economic conversation tests in telephone speech quality assessment

In telephony, there is a permanent need for auditory testing of the effect of different types of impairment on speech communication quality. Though quality perception is different in listening‐only and conversation situations, for economic (time and money) reasons, in most cases only listening‐only tests are carried out to assess telephone speech quality. For some parameters, however, conversation tests are mandatory, as the parameter under investigation affects only the conversation situation (e.g., echo, delay). In order to overcome the limitations of conversation tests, new scenarios have been developed which allow the testing of around three times as many circuit conditions within one test session compared to conventional conversation test scenarios. The scenarios cover everyday situations of information exchange, and meet most of the basic requirements of quality assessment scenarios (naturalness, balance, comparability, clarity). The scenarios are available in three languages and have been successfu...

A Structuralistic Approach to Acoustic‐Auditory Functions of Meaning

In this paper we introduce a methodology of semio‐acoustics to get information on how human listeners associate meaning to acoustic‐auditory events. We concentrate on identifying cues in the auditory stream listeners base the association of meaning on as well on modelling major characteristics of the reference system of meaning. The methodology we use is closely related to structuralism, an approach that has its origins in semiotics. In principle, structuralism differentiates between creating functions, carrying functions and changing functions of systems of meaning. We concentrate on carrying and changing functions here using the following procedure: a sign‐carrier (in our case an acoustic‐auditory event the association of meaning is based on) is decomposed into sub‐units. By a minimal pair analysis we investigate carrying and changing functions of acoustic‐auditory features with regard to the associated meaning. We will introduce the methodology used and discuss first results of a pilot study.

The perception of product sound quality

There are different methods and methodologies available to assess the quality of sounds. Generally, instrumental and auditory assessment can be distinguished. For instrumental assessment, physical data are collected and analyzed, and a sound quality value is computed in the end. Auditory assessment methods use human listeners who judge on the quality of a perceived sound. Experts very often face the fact that instrumental and auditory quality values are not in accordance with each other. This holds especially for the case where instrumental methods are used to predict how a human listener will perceive the quality of a sound. It is the task of sound quality assessment research to abridge the gap between predicted and experienced sound quality. There are different approaches to reach this goal. The talk concentrates on one specific aspect, namely on the function of sounds. Sounds convey a meaning. The meaning is assigned to them by the listener. The relation between form and content is either arbitrary or ...

Speech quality and the E‐model

The E‐model is a quality prediction model for network planning purposes. Its use is going to be recommended by the ITU‐T. In comparison with both listening‐only and conversation tests the model often shows high predictive power. Accordingly, network planners have high confidence in its applicability. However, until now it is not yet discretely understood which aspects of quality are actually covered by E‐model predictions. To name only two, uncertainties do exist, e.g., for the mode of communication (listening only or conversation) and user‐related factors. In the talk, a schematic is presented which covers, besides speech‐communication‐related elements (one‐way voice transmission quality, communication effectiveness, ease of communication) also human‐factor‐related and service‐related elements (comfort, costs). It is shown that matters are simplified by exclusively using the MOS as the basis for a thorough verification of the model. In the course of verification, measures of user acceptance, expectation,...

Speech perception in telephone situations under ambient noise conditions

In a telephone situation, the partners of a conversation generally experience ambient noise because they are located in acoustically realistic environments. The impact of the ambient noise on the quality of a telecommunication service is a double one: on the one hand, the noise deteriorates the acoustical speech signal either directly or via the sidetone path of a telephone handset, thus leading to lower intelligibility and overall quality. On the other hand, it distracts the listener’s attention. Models which try to predict the effect of ambient noise for telephone network planning purposes in general only regard a diffuse room noise level. However, localization of possible ambient noise sources can help the listener to concentrate on the conversation rather than being distracted by the noise. A conversation test has been carried out in order to investigate the effect of ambient noise in both handset and hands‐free telephone situations. Noise was either diffuse or localized at different positions relativ...