This book is one outcome of the NATO Advanced Studies Institute (ASI) Workshop, "Speechreading by Man and Machine," held at the Chateau de Bonas, Castera-Verduzan (near Auch, France) from August 28 to Septem ber 8, 1995 - the first interdisciplinary meeting devoted the subject of speechreading ("lipreading"). The forty-five attendees from twelve countries covered the gamut of speechreading research, from brain scans of humans processing bi-modal stimuli, to psychophysical experiments and illusions, to statistics of comprehension by the normal and deaf communities, to models of human perception, to computer vision and learning algorithms and hardware for automated speechreading machines. The first week focussed on speechreading by humans, the second week by machines, a general organization that is preserved in this volume. After the in evitable difficulties in clarifying language and terminology across disciplines as diverse as human neurophysiology, audiology, psychology, electrical en gineering, mathematics, and computer science, the participants engaged in lively discussion and debate. We think it is fair to say that there was an atmosphere of excitement and optimism for a field that is both fascinating and potentially lucrative. Of the many general results that can be taken from the workshop, two of the key ones are these: * The ways in which humans employ visual image for speech recogni tion are manifold and complex, and depend upon the talker-perceiver pair, severity and age of onset of any hearing loss, whether the topic of conversation is known or unknown, the level of noise, and so forth.

This work addresses the evaluation of the human and the automatic speaker recognition performances under different channel distortions caused by bandwidth limitation, codecs, and electro-acoustic user interfaces, among other impairments. Its main contribution is the demonstration of the benefits of communication channels of extended bandwidth, together with an insight into how speaker-specific characteristics of speech are preserved through different transmissions. It provides sufficient motivation for considering speaker recognition as a criterion for the migration from narrowband to enhanced bandwidths, such as wideband and super-wideband.

The advances in computing and networking have sparked an enormous interest in deploying automatic speech recognition on mobile devices and over communication networks. This book brings together academic researchers and industrial practitioners to address the issues in this emerging realm and presents the reader with a comprehensive introduction to the subject of speech recognition in devices and networks. It covers network, distributed and embedded speech recognition systems.

Corpus-based methods will be found at the heart of many language and speech processing systems. This book provides an in-depth introduction to these technologies through chapters describing basic statistical modeling techniques for language and speech, the use of Hidden Markov Models in continuous speech recognition, the development of dialogue systems, part-of-speech tagging and partial parsing, data-oriented parsing and n-gram language modeling. The book attempts to give both a clear overview of the main technologies used in language and speech processing, along with sufficient mathematics to understand the underlying principles. There is also an extensive bibliography to enable topics of interest to be pursued further. Overall, we believe that the book will give newcomers a solid introduction to the field and it will give existing practitioners a concise review of the principal technologies used in state-of-the-art language and speech processing systems. Corpus-Based Methods in Language and Speech Processing is an initiative of ELSNET, the European Network in Language and Speech. In its activities, ELSNET attaches great importance to the integration of language and speech, both in research and in education. The need for and the potential of this integration are well demonstrated by this publication.

This new Springer volume provides a comprehensive and detailed look at current approaches to automated question answering. The level of presentation is suitable for newcomers to the field as well as for professionals wishing to study this area and/or to build practical QA systems. The book can serve as a "how-to" handbook for IT practitioners and system developers. It can also be used to teach graduate courses in Computer Science, Information Science and related disciplines.

The Creative Electronic Music Producer examines the creative processes of electronic music production, from idea discovery and perception to the power of improvising, editing, effects processing, and sound design. Featuring case studies from across the globe on musical systems and workflows used in the production process, this book highlights how to pursue creative breakthroughs through exploration, trial and error tinkering, recombination, and transformation. The Creative Electronic Music Producer maps production's enchanting pathways in a way that will fascinate and inspire students of electronic music production, professionals already working in the industry, and hobbyists.

Game Audio Fundamentals takes the reader on a journey through game audio design: from analog and digital audio basics, to the art and execution of sound effects, soundtracks, and voice production, as well as learning how to make sense of a truly effective soundscape. Presuming no pre-existing knowledge, this accessible guide is accompanied by online resources - including practical examples and incremental DAW exercises - and presents the theory and practice of game audio in detail, and in a format anyone can understand. This is essential reading for any aspiring game audio designer, as well as students and professionals from a range of backgrounds, including music, audio engineering, and game design.

Rhythm and Transforms is a book that explores rhythm in music, its structure and how we perceive it. The book will be bought by engineers interested in acoustic signal processing as well as musicians, composers and computer scientists. Anyone interested in the scientific basis of music from psychologists to the designers of electronic musical instruments will be interested in this book.

- This is the first book for academic podcasters. With theoretical background as well as detailed practical instructions, this book explores the what, why and how of academic podcasting. - Podcasting is becoming an ever-more popular form of both creating knowledge and disseminating research to reach both academic and non-academic audiences. - Competing titles are solely concerned with podcasting as an object of study or as a how-to guide. This book is unique in that it brings together research into a subfield of podcasting, with arguments about why it is a normatively good thing for academia before synthesising this knowledge by detailing how to do it. This is the only book specifically about academic podcasting.

Prepare yourself to be a great producer when using Pro Tools in your studio. Pro Tools 9 for Music Production is the definitive guide to the software for new and professional users, providing you with all the vital skills you need to know. Covering both the Pro Tools HD and LE this book is extensively illustrated in color and packed with time saving hints and tips, it is a great reference to keep on hand as a constant source of information. Detailed chapters on the user interface, the MIDI and scoring features, recording, editing, signal processing and mixing blend essential knowledge with tutorials and practical examples from actual recordings. New and updated materials include: *Pro Tools 9 software described in detail *Details of the new functions and features of PT9 *Full color screen shots and equipment photos Pro Tools 9 for Music Production is a vital source of reference, for the working professional or serious hobbyist looking for professional results.

Working with Sound is an exploration of the ever-changing working practices of audio development in the era of hybrid collaboration in the games industry. Through learnings from the pre-pandemic remote and isolated worlds of audio work, sound designers, composers and dialogue designers find themselves equipped uniquely to thrive in the hybrid, remote, and studio-based realms of today's fast-evolving working landscapes. With unique insights into navigating the worlds of isolation and collaboration, this book explores ways of thinking and working in this world, equipping the reader with inspiration to sustainably tackle the many stages of the development process. Working with Sound is an essential guide for professionals working in dynamic audio teams of all sizes, as well as the designers, producers, artists, animators and programmers who collaborate closely with their colleagues working on game audio and sound.

This book is a theoretical and practical deep dive into the craft of worldbuilding for video games, with an explicit focus on how different job disciplines contribute to worldbuilding. In addition to providing lenses for recognizing the various components in creating fictional and digital worlds, the author positions worldbuilding as a reciprocal and dynamic process, a process which acknowledges that worldbuilding is both created by and instrumental in the design of narrative, gameplay, art, audio, and more. Collaborative Worldbuilding for Video Games encourages mutual respect and collaboration among teams and provides game writers and narrative designers tools for effectively incorporating other job roles into their own worldbuilding practice and vice versa. Features: Provides in-depth exploration of worldbuilding via respective job disciplines Deep dives and case studies into a variety of games, both AAA and indie Includes boxed articles for deeper interrogation and exploration of key ideas Contains templates and checklists for practical tips on worldbuilding

People engage in discourse every day - from writing letters and presenting papers to simple discussions. Yet discourse is a complex and fascinating phenomenon that is not well understood. This volume stems from a multidisciplinary workshop in which eminent scholars in linguistics, sociology and computational linguistics presented various aspects of discourse. The topics treated range from multi-party conversational interactions to deconstructing text from various perspectives, considering topic-focus development and discourse structure, and an empirical study of discourse segmentation. The chapters not only describe each author's favorite burning issue in discourse but also provide a fascinating view of the research methodology and style of argumentation in each field.

This book presents details of a text-to-speech synthesis procedure using epoch synchronous overlap add (ESOLA), and provides a solution for development of a text-to-speech system using minimum data resources compared to existing solutions. It also examines most natural speech signals including random perturbation in synthesis. The book is intended for students, researchers and industrial practitioners in the field of text-to-speech synthesis.

Here's a scientific look at computer-generated speech verification and identification -- its underlying technology, practical applications, and future direction. You get a solid background in voice recognition technology to help you make informed decisions on which voice recognition-based software to use in your company or organization. It is unique in its clear explanations of mathematical concepts, as well as its full-chapter presentation of the successful new Multi-Granular Segregating System for accurate, context-free speech identification.

Auditory Interfaces explores how human-computer interactions can be significantly enhanced through the improved use of the audio channel. Providing historical, theoretical and practical perspectives, the book begins with an introductory overview, before presenting cutting-edge research with chapters on embodied music recognition, nonspeech audio, and user interfaces. This book will be of interest to advanced students, researchers and professionals working in a range of fields, from audio sound systems, to human-computer interaction and computer science.

In this book, a novel approach that combines speech-based emotion recognition with adaptive human-computer dialogue modeling is described. With the robust recognition of emotions from speech signals as their goal, the authors analyze the effectiveness of using a plain emotion recognizer, a speech-emotion recognizer combining speech and emotion recognition, and multiple speech-emotion recognizers at the same time. The semi-stochastic dialogue model employed relates user emotion management to the corresponding dialogue interaction history and allows the device to adapt itself to the context, including altering the stylistic realization of its speech. This comprehensive volume begins by introducing spoken language dialogue systems and providing an overview of human emotions, theories, categorization and emotional speech. It moves on to cover the adaptive semi-stochastic dialogue model and the basic concepts of speech-emotion recognition. Finally, the authors show how speech-emotion recognizers can be optimized, and how an adaptive dialogue manager can be implemented. The book, with its novel methods to perform robust speech-based emotion recognition at low complexity, will be of interest to a variety of readers involved in human-computer interaction.

Foreword Looking back the past 30 years. we have seen steady progress made in the area of speech science and technology. I still remember the excitement in the late seventies when Texas Instruments came up with a toy named "Speak-and-Spell" which was based on a VLSI chip containing the state-of-the-art linear prediction synthesizer. This caused a speech technology fever among the electronics industry. Particularly. applications of automatic speech recognition were rigorously attempt ed by many companies. some of which were start-ups founded just for this purpose. Unfortunately. it did not take long before they realized that automatic speech rec ognition technology was not mature enough to satisfy the need of customers. The fever gradually faded away. In the meantime. constant efforts have been made by many researchers and engi neers to improve the automatic speech recognition technology. Hardware capabilities have advanced impressively since that time. In the past few years. we have been witnessing and experiencing the advent of the "Information Revolution." What might be called the second surge of interest to com mercialize speech technology as a natural interface for man-machine communication began in much better shape than the first one. With computers much more powerful and faster. many applications look realistic this time. However. there are still tremendous practical issues to be overcome in order for speech to be truly the most natural interface between humans and machines."

Sounds of the Pandemic offers one of the first critical analyses of the changes in sonic environments, artistic practice, and listening behaviour caused by the Coronavirus outbreak. This multifaceted collection provides a detailed picture of a wide array of phenomena related to sound and music, including soundscapes, music production, music performance, and mediatisation processes in the context of COVID-19. It represents a first step to understanding how the pandemic and its by-products affected sound domains in terms of experiences and practices, representations, collective imaginaries, and socio-political manipulations. This book is essential reading for students, researchers, and practitioners working in the realms of music production and performance, musicology and ethnomusicology, sound studies, and media and cultural studies.

Developments in technology have made it possible for speech output to be used in place of the more usual visual interface in both domestic and commercial devices. Speech can be used in situations where visual attention is occupied, such as when driving a car, or where a task is complex and traditional visual interfaces are not effective, such as programming a video recorder. Speech can also be employed in specialist adaptations for visually impaired people. However, the use of speech has not been universally successful, possibly because the speech interaction is poorly designed. Speech is fundamentally different from text, and a lot of the problems may arise due to simplified text-to-speech conversion. Design of Speech-based Devices considers the problems associated with speech interaction, and offers practical solutions.

Audio production is an incredibly rewarding craft. To take the raw, basic tracks of a fledgling idea and shape them into one glorious stereophonic sound wave is an amazing feat. The transformation from analogue to digital dominance has brought many advances in sound quality and new techniques, but producing digital music with only a standard computer and DAW can be problematic, time-consuming and sometimes disappointing without the right approach and skills. In Template Mixing and Mastering, renowned mix engineer Billy Decker tackles the challenges of in-the-box production through his innovative template approach. He shares his passion and knowledge from over twenty years of industry experience, including an introduction to templates and a step-by-step guide to their set-up and a discussion of drum replacement technology. Channel and setting information for each of the drum, instrument and vocal sections of his template is discussed along with the master channel and his methodology of mixing and mastering. Finally, he gives professional advice and best practice. This book features the full template used on sixteen No 1 records!

This book discusses all aspects of computing for expressive performance, from the history of CSEMPs to the very latest research, in addition to discussing the fundamental ideas, and key issues and directions for future research. Topics and features: includes review questions at the end of each chapter; presents a survey of systems for real-time interactive control of automatic expressive music performance, including simulated conducting systems; examines two systems in detail, YQX and IMAP, each providing an example of a very different approach; introduces techniques for synthesizing expressive non-piano performances; addresses the challenges found in polyphonic music expression, from a statistical modelling point of view; discusses the automated analysis of musical structure, and the evaluation of CSEMPs; describes the emerging field of embodied expressive musical performance, devoted to building robots that can expressively perform music with traditional instruments.

This 2-volume work represents the proceedings of the First European Workshop on Fault Diagnostics, Reliability and Re- lated Knowledge-Based Approaches held in the Island of Rho- des, Greece (August 3l-September 3, 1986). This Workshop was organized in the framework of a joint research project spon- sored by the Commission of the European Communi ties under the Stimulation Action Programme. The principal aim of the Workshop was to bring together people working on the numeric and symbolic (knowledge-based) treatment of reliability and fault diagnosis problems, in order to promote the interaction and exhange of ideas, expe- riences and results in this area. The workshop was a real success, with SS papers presen- ted and 70 participants. A second Workshop of the same na- ture has been decided to be held in Manchester (UMIST), - gland, in April 1987. . The two volumes contain sufficient amount of informa- tion which reflects very well the state-of-the-art of the field, and shows the current tendency towards knowledge-ba- sed (expert systems) and fault-tolerant approaches. Volume 1 contains the contributions on fault diagnostics and reliability issues (numeric treatment), and Vo*lume 2 the contributions on knowledge~based and fault-tolerant techni- ques. We are grateful to the Commission of the European Com- munities for having sponsored the Workshop, and to all au- thors for their high quality contributions and presenta- tions.