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A Hierarchical Bayesian Approach to Modeling Heterogeneity in Speech Quality Assessment

Publication Type Journal Article
Authors Iman Mossavat, Petko Petkov, W. Bastiaan Kleijn, Oliver Amft
Title A Hierarchical Bayesian Approach to Modeling Heterogeneity in Speech Quality Assessment
Abstract The development of objective speech quality measures generally involves setting a model to subjective rating data. A typical data set comprises ratings generated by listening tests performed in different languages and across different laboratories. These factors as well as others, such as the sex and age of the talker, influence the subjective ratings and result in data heterogeneity. We use a linear hierarchical Bayes (HB) structure to account for heterogeneity. To make the structure effective, we develop a variational Bayesian inference for the linear HB structure that approximates not only the posterior over the model parameters, but also the model evidence. Using the approximate model evidence we are able to study and exploit the heterogeneity inducing factors in the Bayesian framework. The new approach yields a simple linear predictor with state-of-the-art predictive performance. Our experiments show that the new method compares favorably with systems based on more complex predictor structures such as ITU-T recommendation P.563, Bayesian MARS, and Gaussian processes.
Publication IEEE Transactions on Audio, Speech and Language Processing
Volume 20
Issue 1
Pages 136–146
Date January 2012
DOI 10.1109/TASL.2011.2158421
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Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg