Auditory-articulatory analysis for use in speech quality assessment. Articulatory analysis is based on a comparison between powers associated with articulation and non-articulation frequency ranges of a speech signal. Neither source speech nor an estimate of the source speech is utilized in articulatory analysis. Articulatory analysis comprises the steps of comparing articulation power and non-articulation power of a speech signal, and assessing speech quality based on the comparison, wherein articulation and non-articulation powers are powers associated with articulation and non-articulation frequency ranges of the speech signal.

A security method compares a present verbal utterance with a previously recorded verbal utterance by comparing time-frequency domain representations of the utterances, with multiple repeat utterances forming a basis for determining a variation in repetitious performance by an individual, and similar differences between enrollment and challenge utterances forming a basis for a similar analysis of variance between enrollment and challenge utterances. In one embodiment a set of enrollment data is searched by each challenge until either a match is made, indicating an action, possibly dependent upon the specific match, or no match is made indicating an abort. In one application an individual is accepted or rejected as an imposter, in another applicaton, a selected action is accepted as corresponding to a verbal command.

Disclosed is an objective speech quality assessment technique that reflects the impact of distortions which can dominate overall speech quality assessment by modeling the impact of such distortions on subjective speech quality assessment, thereby, accounting for language effects in objective speech quality assessment.

A method for objective speech quality assessment that accounts for phonetic contents, speaking styles or individual speaker differences by distorting speech signals under speech quality assessment. By using a distorted version of a speech signal, it is possible to compensate for different phonetic contents, different individual speakers and different speaking styles when assessing speech quality. The amount of degradation in the objective speech quality assessment by distorting the speech signal is maintained similarly for different speech signals, especially when the amount of distortion of the distorted version of speech signal is severe. Objective speech quality assessment for the distorted speech signal and the original undistorted speech signal are compared to obtain a speech quality assessment compensated for utterance dependent articulation.

A telephone transaction support system includes a customer information registration unit for registering information regarding a customer in a database, the information being obtained in a conversation with the customer over a telephone, a feature analyzing unit for analyzing a feature of a voice corresponding to a predetermined word obtained in the conversation with the customer over the telephone, and a password information registration unit for registering information-obtained by the feature analyzing unit as password information in the database, the password information corresponding to the customer in the database. The information regarding the customer for which a transaction over the telephone should be allowed and the password information for the customer can be registered over the telephone.