Objective quality evaluation for low-bit-rate speech coding systems

An LPC (linear predictive coding) cepstrum distance measure (CD) is introduced as an objective measure for estimating the subjective quality of speech signals. Good correspondence between LPC CD and the subjective quality, expressed in terms of both opinion equivalent Q and mean opinion score, are shown. Good repeatability of objective quality evaluation using LPC CD is also shown. A method for generating an artificial voice signal that reflects the characteristics of real speech signals is described. The LPC CD values calculated using this artificial voice are almost the same as those calculated using real speech signals. The speaker-dependency of the coded-speech quality is shown to be an important factor in low-bit-rate speech coding. Even taking this factor into consideration, LPC CD is shown to be effective for estimating the subjective quality.<
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