Closed Set Speaker Identification using Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficients on Vowels preceding nasal continuants in Kannada

Abstract

The aim of the present study was to obtain the percentage of speaker identification using vowels preceding nasal continuants in Kannada speaking adult individuals using semi-automatic method. The participants were twenty Kannada speaking adult males in the age range of 21-32 years constituted as Group I. This was further sub grouped as Group II constituting ten speakers. The material was meaningful Kannada words containing long vowels /a:/, /i:/ and /u:/ preceding nasal continuants /m/ and /n/ embedded in Kannada sentences. The participants read the material four times each under two conditions (a) live recording and (b) mobile network recording. The target words were truncated using the PRAAT software. Each vowel preceding nasal was subjected for extraction of Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCCs) using Speech Science lab Workbench for Semi-automatic speaker recognition software. The study was compared under three conditions: (a) Live vs live recording, (b) Mobile network vs mobile network recording and (c) Live vs mobile network recoding. The same was found across the three conditions when the participants reduced from twenty to ten in number. The results of the present study indicated quite high percent of correct speaker identification using MFCCs in Live vs Live and Mobile network vs Mobile network conditions compared to Live vs mobile network condition. The obtained outcome would serve as potential measure in the forensic scenario for identification of speakers using vowels preceding nasal continuants in Kannada.