HOARSE Mid Term Review Coordinator’s Report Phil Green University of Sheffield, UK
HOARSE Science HOARSE provides research training in –Hearing, –Auditory Perception, –Speech Production –Speech Technology These topics are richly-related, Traditionally they have been studied by disparate communities HOARSE is attempting to change that Scientific Importance: understanding human competence Commercial Importance: inform and improve speech technology
HOARSE Science: Objectives Overall objectives: –better understanding of speech production and hearing –explain the perceptual organisation of sound –improve speech technology Themes 1.Auditory Scene analysis 2.Reverberation 3.Speech Production 4.Automatic Speech Recognition 5.ASR Applications
HOARSE Science: Highlights Binaural cues in auditory scenes with multiple sources and reverberation (Merimaa, Worley) Perception of reverberation and sound spaces (Worley) Signal processing techniques in auditory scenes: blind source separation and microphone array beamforming (Bourgeois, Latoud) Studies of the singing voice (Bjorkner) Auditory Scene analysis in Music (Eggink) Classifying frequency-localised patterns for ASR – (Maier, Svojanovsky) How do listeners model simultaneous sound sources? (Perez, Adank)
HOARSE Networking 2-day workshops every 6 months –All YRs give update talks –Academics give overview talks as appropriate –Overview of the industrial scene by non-executive director –Steering committee meets during the workshop Methodology is multidisciplinary –Phonetics –Perceptual experiments –Acoustics –Instrumentation –Signal Processing –Mathematical Modelling Broad-brush work plan for each of 5 themes: progress against work plan is good but the plan itself is out-of-date Industrial links –Daimler-Chrysler –Non-executive director (Jordan Cohen, VoiceSignal) Other funded collaborations between HOARSE partners
HOARSE Training Each YR has a supervisor in her/his host lab and an advisor in a different lab YRs are encouraged to visit other HOARSE labs: at least 1 week in each lab is the norm Doctoral YRs take advantage of training programmes at their host institutions
Budget & Forecast to date