Part of Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 5 (NIPS 1992)
Weimin Liu, Andreas Andreou, Moise Goldstein
This paper discusses the parameterization of speech by an analog cochlear model. The tradeoff between time and frequency resolution is viewed as the fundamental difference between conventional spectrographic analysis and cochlear signal processing for broadband, rapid-changing signals. The model's response exhibits a wavelet-like analysis in the scale domain that preserves good temporal resolution; the frequency of each spectral compo(cid:173) nent in a broadband signal can be accurately determined from the inter(cid:173) peak intervals in the instantaneous firing rates of auditory fibers. Such properties of the cochlear model are demonstrated with natural speech and synthetic complex signals.