Quality of Voice and Audio Transmission Systems

Abstract

After the introduction to the basics of psychophysical measurements and usability engineering, concrete procedures for determining the quality of information and communication technology systems will now be discussed. The focus of this chapter is on systems that work with auditorily perceivable signals. In particular, the modality “spoken language” is of special importance, since it is the most frequently used modality for interpersonal communication; this makes it especially interesting for human-machine interaction. We are particularly interested in the influence of the transmission channel used to transmit speech (or other auditory signals, e.g., music, sounds), and less in human speech production. The evaluation procedures considered here can be applied in a similar form to other problems, such as the evaluation of the quality of music coding procedures.