Sinewave synthesis, or sine wave speech, is a technique for
synthesizing speech by replacing the
formants
In speech science and phonetics, a formant is the broad spectral maximum that results from an acoustic resonance of the human vocal tract. In acoustics, a formant is usually defined as a broad peak, or local maximum, in the spectrum. For harmon ...
(main bands of energy) with pure tone whistles. The first sinewave synthesis program (''SWS'') for the automatic creation of stimuli for perceptual experiments was developed by
Philip Rubin at
Haskins Laboratories in the 1970s. This program was subsequently used by
Robert Remez
Robert Remez is an American experimental psychologist and cognitive scientist, and is Professor of Psychology at Barnard College, Columbia University and Chair of the Columbia University Seminar on Language & Cognition (founded in 2000). His teach ...
,
Philip Rubin, David Pisoni, and other colleagues to show that listeners can
perceive continuous speech without traditional speech cues, i.e., pitch, stress, and intonation. This work paved the way for a view of
speech
Speech is a human vocal communication using language. Each language uses phonetic combinations of vowel and consonant sounds that form the sound of its words (that is, all English words sound different from all French words, even if they are th ...
as a dynamic pattern of trajectories through articulatory-acoustic space.
Bibliography
* Rubin, P.E. Sinewave synthesis. Internal memorandum, Haskins Laboratories, New Haven, CT, 198
* Remez, R.E., Rubin, P.E., Pisoni, D.B., & Carrell, T.D. Speech perception without traditional speech cues. ''Science'', 1981, 212, 947-950.
* Best, C.T., Morrongiello, B. & Robson, R. Perceptual equivalence of acoustic cues in speech and nonspeech perception. ''Perception & Psychophysics'', 1981, 29, 191-211.
* Remez, R.E., Rubin, P.E., Berns, S.M., Pardo, J.S. & Lang, J.M. On the perceptual organization of speech. ''Psychological Review'', 1994, 101, 129-156.
* Remez, R. E., Fellowes, J. M., & Rubin, P.E. Talker identification based on phonetic information. ''Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance'', 1997, 23, 651-666.
References
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External links
Haskins LaboratoriesRobert Remez
* ttps://github.com/johnhw/sinewave_speech A Python tool to convert WAV files to sinewave speech using linear predictive coding
SinSyn - Sinusoidal Synthesizer
A browser-based tool for creating individual sounds with sinewave synthesis
Speech synthesis
Applications of artificial intelligence
Computational linguistics