Speech-material and talker effects in speech band importance

Band-importance functions created using the compound method [Apoux and Healy (2012). J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 132, 1078–1087] provide more detail than those generated using the ANSI technique, necessitating and allowing a re-examination of the influences of speech material and talker on the shape of the band-importance function. More specifically, the detailed functions may reflect, to a larger extent, acoustic idiosyncrasies of the individual talker's voice. Twenty-one band functions were created using standard speech materials and recordings by different talkers. The band-importance functions representing the same speech-material type produced by different talkers were found to be more similar to one another than functions representing the same talker producing different speech-material types. Thus, the primary finding was the relative strength of a speech-material effect and weakness of a talker effect. This speech-material effect extended to other materials in the same broad class (different sentence corpo...