SMOOTHENING THE INFORMATION DENSITY OF SPOKEN WORDS IN AN AUDIO SIGNAL

摘要

A portion of an audio signal is identified corresponding to a spoken word and its phonemes. A set of alternate spoken words satisfying phonetic similarity criteria to the spoken word is generated. A subset of the set of alternate spoken words is also identified; each member of the subset shares the same phoneme in a similar temporal position as the spoken word. A significance factor is then calculated for the phoneme based on the number of alternates in the subset and on the total number of alternates. The calculated significance factor may then be used to lengthen or shorten the temporal duration of the phoneme in the audio signal according to its significance in the spoken word.