This volume offers the results of research carried out to develop novel fractal-based techniques for the analysis of speech and audio signals. A great deal of this work is currently finding its way into practical commercial applications with Nokia Communications and other key organizations. After an introduction to speech processing and fractal geometry, fractal techniques are described in detail with numerous applications and examples. A final chapter summarizes the advantages and potential of the new techniques.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Nonlinear Speech Processing, NoLISP 2011, held in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain, in November 2011. The purpose of the workshop is to present and discuss new ideas, techniques and results related to alternative approaches in speech processing that may depart from the main stream. The 33 papers presented together with 2 keynote talks were carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in this book. The topics of NOLISP 2011 were non-linear approximation and estimation; non-linear oscillators and predictors; higher-order statistics; independent component analysis; nearest neighbors; neural networks; decision trees; non-parametric models; dynamics of non-linear systems; fractal methods; chaos modeling; and non-linear differential equations.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Nonlinear Speech Processing, NOLISP 2013, held in Mons, Belgium, in June 2013. The 27 refereed papers included in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 34 submissions. The paper are organized in topical sections on speech and audio analysis; speech synthesis; speech-based biomedical applications; automatic speech recognition; and speech enhancement.

Compiled by an international array of musical and technical specialists, this book deals with some of the most important topics in modern musical signal processing. Beginning with basic concepts, and leading to advanced applications, it covers such essential areas as sound synthesis (including detailed studies of physical modelling and granular synthesis) ,control signal synthesis, sound transformation (including convolution), analysis/resynthesis (phase vocodor, wavelets, analysis by chaotic functions), object-oriented and artificial intelligence representations, musical interfaces and the integration of signal processing techniques in concert performance.

Fractal geometry and recent developments in wavelet theory are having an important impact on the field of signal processing. Efficient representations for fractal signals based on wavelets are opening up new applications for signal processing, and providing better solutions to problems in existing applications. Signal Processing with Fractals provides a valuable introduction to this new and exciting area, and develops a powerful conceptual foundation for understanding the topic. Practical techniques for synthesizing, analyzing, and processing fractal signals for a wide range of applications are developed in detail, and novel applications in communications are explored.

This book presents recent advances in nonlinear speech processing beyond nonlinear techniques. It shows that it exploits heuristic and psychological models of human interaction in order to succeed in the implementations of socially believable VUIs and applications for human health and psychological support. The book takes into account the multifunctional role of speech and what is “outside of the box” (see Björn Schuller’s foreword). To this aim, the book is organized in 6 sections, each collecting a small number of short chapters reporting advances “inside” and “outside” themes related to nonlinear speech research. The themes emphasize theoretical and practical issues for modelling socially believable speech interfaces, ranging from efforts to capture the nature of sound changes in linguistic contexts and the timing nature of speech; labors to identify and detect speech features that help in the diagnosis of psychological and neuronal disease, attempts to improve the effectiveness and performance of Voice User Interfaces, new front-end algorithms for the coding/decoding of effective and computationally efficient acoustic and linguistic speech representations, as well as investigations capturing the social nature of speech in signaling personality traits, emotions and improving human machine interactions.