The area of speech and audio processing has evolved rapidly with ubiquitous mobile telephony and Voice over IP services such as Skype, Google Hangouts or Apple FaceTime. Audio streaming services like Spotify or YouTube use encodes audio steams to optimize the tradeoff between quality and bandwidth resources. Faster networks, better connectivity, increased processing power combined with advances in signal processing and analysis techniques have made speech controlled applications like Siri possible using server side speech processing.
The module will introduce sound production and perception. It will highlight important perceptual attributes of sound and their correlates in signal structure. This will motivate various signal processing techniques. Different representations of speech and audio will be presented and applied to problems in audio processing.
This module targets students with an interest in understanding sound and audio. Prior digital signal processing experience is not a prerequisite.
- Introduction to speech and audio processing
- Basic audio processing
- Speech
- The human auditory system
- Psychoacoustics
- Speech communications
- Audio analysis
- Advanced topics (Indicative and will vary)
- Psychoacoustic modelling
- Sound synthesis
- Speaker recognition
The module is designed to be delivered within a blended learning model, employing mixed modes (online and face to face) of learning, teaching and assessment.
The course delivery involves a combination of lectures and labs. Early labs include prescribed exercises that focus on fundamental concepts. The final submission is an open ended problem giving students a chance to pursue an area of interest.
| Module Content & Assessment | |
|---|---|
| Assessment Breakdown | % |
| Formal Examination | 50 |
| Other Assessment(s) | 50 |