White Paper:Automated Sound Quality Estimation
Automated sound signals quality estimation
1. INTRODUCTION
Sound signal quality estimation acquires the increasing value with the distribution of mobile communications, systems of a synthetic telephony, VoIP and various portable sound recording and sound reproducing devices. The desire naturally arises to work out a way, which would provide objective estimation (i.e. independently from estimation of particular subject) and the opportunity to automate such estimation. It is of a high importance as for comparison of competitive commercial products as well as for parameters’ optimisation of proprietary products.
One of the main parameters in systems of compression, transfer and reproduction of the sound information is the quality of the restored, received or reproduced sound.
Quantitative measurement of sound quality has specific features due to the fact that the final receiver of a sound signal is always a human, and a human is also a source of the majority of sound signals. According to the well-known fact, sound signals quality is determined not only by the technical characteristics of a sound processing and transfer systems, but also by the properties of individual peculiarities of speech perception and production, which vary in time and from individual to individual.
2.REVIEW OF QUALITY ESTIMATION METHODS
Subjective and objective methods to measure speech quality are distinguished. Subjective methods are those, which include the hearing of a person as a component of a measuring complex. Objective methods, on the contrary, exclude participation of person’s hearing from the process of measurements.
The most widespread subjective method of speech quality estimation is MOS (Mean Opinion Score), five-point scale estimation. Read more
