E: OK .
B: OK ,
B: so We we had a meeting with , uh with Hynek , um , in in which , uh , uh , Sunil and Stephane , uh summarized where they were and and , uh , talked about where we were gonna go .
B: So that that happened sort of mid - week .
E: D did did you guys get your code pushed together ?
B: Uh .
D: Oh , yeah .
D: Yeah .
D: It 's it 's it 's it was updated yesterday ,
E: Cool .
D: right ?
A: Yeah .
D: Yeah .
E: Oh , right , I saw I saw the note .
A: You probably received the mail .
A: Yeah .
E: Mm - hmm .
B: What was the update ?
A: What was the update ?
B: Yeah .
A: So there is th then the all the new features that go in .
A: The , um , noise suppression , the re - synthesis of speech after suppression .
E: Is the , um the CVS mechanism working well ?
A: These are the A: Yeah .
E: Are are people , uh , up at OGI grabbing code uh , via that ?
E: Or ?
D: Uh , I don't think I don't think A: I don't know if they use it ,
A: but .
E: Uh - huh .
D: Yeah , I I don't think anybody up there is like working on it right now .
E: Mmm .
B: I think it more likely that what it means is that when Sunil is up there he will grab it .
D: Yeah .
D: Yeah .
E: Yeah .
D: So right now nobody 's working on Aurora there .
E: I see .
B: They 're B: Yeah . They 're working on a different task .
E: I see .
D: Yeah .
E: OK .
B: But what 'll happen is is he 'll go back up there and , uh , Pratibha will come back from from , uh , the east coast .
E: Mm - hmm .
B: Uh .
B: And , uh and and I guess actually , uh , after Eurospeech for a little bit , uh , he 'll go up there too .
B: So , actually everybody who 's working on it <comment> will be up there for at least a little while .
B: So they 'll remotely access it from there .
E: So has Has anybody tried remotely accessing the CVS using , uh , uh , SSH ?
B: Yeah .
A: Um , I don't know if Hari did that or You d
D: I <comment> can actually do it
D: today . I mean , I can just log into E: Have you tried it yet ?
D: No , I didn't .
E: OK .
D: So I I 'll try it today .
B: Good idea .
B: Yeah .
D: Yeah .
A: Actually I I tried wh while when I installed the repository , I tried from Belgium .
A: I logged in there and I tried to import E: Yeah ?
E: It worked good ?
A: Yeah , it works .
E: Oh , good !
E: Great !
D: Oh .
A: But it 's So , right now it 's the mechanism with SSH .
A: I don't s I didn't set up You can also set up a CVS server on a new port .
A: It 's like well uh , a main server , or d You can do a CVS server .
E: Yeah .
E: Right .
E: Then that 's using the CVS password mechanism and all that ,
A: But .
E: right ?
A: Yeah , right .
A: But I didn't do that because I was not sure about security problems .
A: I I would have to E: So w when you came in from Belgian <comment> Belgium , using SSH , uh , was it asking you for your own password into ICSI ?
E: So if yo you can only do that if you have an account at ICSI ?
A: Right .
A: Yeah .
E: OK .
A: Yeah .
E: Cuz there is an a way to set up anonymous CVS
E: right ?
E: So that A: Yeah , you ha in this way you ca you have to set up a CVS server but then , yeah , you can access it .
E: Oh , OK .
E: So the anonymous mechanism A: you you can set up priorities .
A: You can access them and mostly if you if y the set the server is set up like this .
E: OK .
E: Because a lot of the open source stuff works with anonymous CVS
E: and I 'm just wondering Uh , I mean , for our transcripts we may want to do that .
A: Mm - hmm .
B: Yeah .
E: Uh .
B: Yeah , for this stuff I don't think we 're quite up to that .
E: Mm - hmm .
B: I mean , we 're still so much in development .
E: Yeah ,
E: yeah , yeah .
B: We want to have just the insiders .
E: Oh , I wasn't suggesting for this .
E: I 'm thinking of the Meeting Recorder <comment> stuff
E: but .
B: Yeah .
E: Yeah .
E: OK .
E: Cool .
B: Yeah .
B: So , uh E: What 's new ?
B: Well , I mean , I think maybe the thing to me might be I me I 'm sure you 've just been working on on , uh , details of that since the meeting ,
B: right ?
B: And so A: Mmm , since the meeting ,
B: That was that was Tuesday .
A: well , I I 've been I 've been train training a new VAD and a new feature net .
B: OK .
A: So they should be ready .
A: Um .
B: But I guess maybe the thing since you weren't yo you guys weren't at that that meeting , might be just just to , um , sort of recap , uh , the the conclusions of the meeting .
E: Oh , great .
A: Mm - hmm .
E: You 're talking about the meeting with Hynek ?
B: So .
B: Yeah .
B: Cuz that was sort of , uh we we 'd sort of been working up to that , that that , uh , he would come here this week and and we would sort of E: Uh - huh .
B: Since he 's going out of town like now , and I 'm going out town in a couple weeks , uh , and time is marching , sort of , given all the mu many wonderful things we could be working on , what what will we actually focus on ?
E: Mm - hmm .
B: And , uh and what do we freeze ?
B: And , you know , what do we ?
B: So , um .
B: I mean , this software that these guys created was certainly a a key part .
B: So then there 's something central
B: and there aren't at least a bunch of different versions going off in in ways that differ trivially .
E: Yeah .
B: Uh , um , and , um ,
E: That 's that 's nice .
B: and then within that , I guess the idea was to freeze a certain set of options for now , to run it , uh , a particular way , and decide on what things are gonna be experimented with , as opposed to just experimenting with everything .
B: So keep a certain set of things constant .
B: So , um .
B: Uh , maybe describe roughly what what we are keeping constant for now ,
B: or ?
A: Yeah .
A: Well . So we 've been working like six weeks on on the noise compensation and we end up with something that seems reasonable .
A: Um .
E: Are you gonna use which of the two techniques ?
A: So finally it 's it 's , um , Wiener filtering on FFT bins .
A: And it uses , uh , two steps , smoothing of the transfer function ,
A: the first step , that 's along time , which use recursion .
A: And after this step there is a further smoothing along frequency , which use a sliding window of twenty FFT bins .
A: Mmm .
A: And , uh E: So this is on the uh , before any mel scaling has been done ?
A: Yeah ,
E: This is A: yeah .
B: This this smoothing is done on the estimate , um , of what you 're going to subtract ? Or on the thing that has already had something subtracted ?
A: It was A: Yeah .
A: Uh , it 's on the transfer function .
A: So B: Oh , it 's on the transfer function for the Wiener filter .
A: Yeah .
B: Yeah , OK .
A: Yeah , so basically we tried different configuration within this idea .
A: We tried u u applying this on mel bands , having spectral subtraction instead of wiener filtering .
A: Um .
A: Well , finally we end up with this configuration that works , uh , quite well .
A: So we are going to fix this for the moment and work on the other aspects of the whole system .
E: Mm - hmm .
A: So B: Actually , let me int eh , Dave isn't here to talk about it , but let me just interject .
B: This module , in principle , i I mean , you would know whether it 's true in fact , is somewhat independent from the rest of it .
B: I mean , because you you re - synthesize speech ,
B: right ?
A: Mm - hmm .
B: So , um .
B: Uh , well you don't I guess you don't re - synthesize speech , but you could A: We we do not fo
B: Uh , but you could .
A: Well well , we do , but we don't don't re - synthesize .
A: In in the program we don't re - synthesize and then re - analyze once again .
A: We just use the clean FFT bins .
B: But you have a re - synthesized thing that you that 's an an option here .
A: This is an option that then you can A: Yeah .
B: Yeah , I gu I guess my point is that , um , i in some of the work he 's doing in reverberation , one of the things that we 're finding is that , uh , it 's it 's for the for an artificial situation , we can just deal with the reverberation and his techniques work really well .
B: But for the real situation uh , problem is , is that you don't just have reverberation , you have reverberation in noise .
B: And if you don't include that in the model , it doesn't work very well .
B: So in fact it might be a very nice thing to do , to just take the noise removal part of it and put that in front of what he 's looking at . And , uh , generate new files or whatever , and and , uh , uh and then do the reverberation part .
A: Mm - hmm .
B: So it 's D: Mmm .
B: Anyway .
E: So Dave hasn't tried that yet ?
B: No , no . He 's I mean , e
E: I guess he 's busy with B: Yeah , prelims , right .
C: Pre - prelim hell .
E: Yeah .
B: Yeah .
B: So .
E: Yeah .
B: Uh , but but , you know , that 'll B: uh , it 's clear that we , uh we are not with the real case that we 're looking at , we can't just look at reverberation in isolation
B: because the interaction between that and noise is is considerable .
B: And that 's I mean , in the past we 've looked at , uh , and this is hard enough , the interaction between channel effects and and , uh and additive noise , uh , so convolutional effects and and additive effects .
B: And that 's hard enough .
B: I mean , I don't think we really B: I mean , we 're trying to deal with that .
B: In a sense that 's what we 're trying to deal with in this Aurora task .
B: And we have , uh , the , uh , uh , LDA stuff that in principle is doing something about convolutional effects .
B: And we have the noise suppression that 's doing something about noise .
B: Uh , even that 's hard enough .
B: And and the on - line normalization as well , in that s category .
B: i i There 's all these interactions between these two and that 's part of why these guys had to work so hard on on juggling everything around .
B: But now when you throw in the reverberation , it 's even worse ,
B: because not only do you have these effects , but you also have some long time effects .
B: And , um , so Dave has something which , uh , is doing some nice things under some conditions with with long time effects
B: but when it 's when there 's noise there too , it 's it 's it 's pretty hard .
B: So we have to start B: Since any almost any real situation is gonna have uh , where you have the microphone distant , is going to have both things ,
B: we we actually have to think about both at the same time .
E: Hmm .
B: So ,
B: um So there 's this noise suppression thing , which is sort of worked out
B: and then , uh , maybe you should just continue telling what what else is in the the form we have .
A: Yeah , well , the , um , the other parts of the system are the the blocks that were already present before and that we did not modify a lot .
B: So that 's again , that that 's the Wiener filtering , followed by , uh uh , that 's done at the FFT level .
B: Then A: Yeah , th then the mel filter bank ,
B: Mm - hmm .
A: then the log operation ,
B: Mm - hmm .
A: Mmm .
B: The the the filtering is done in the frequency domain ?
A: Yeah .
B: Yeah ,
B: OK .
B: And then the mel and then the log , and then the
A: Then the LDA filter ,
B: LDA filter .
A: mmm , then the downsampling ,
B: And then uh
B: downsample ,
A: DCT ,
B: DCT ,
A: then , um , on - line normalization ,
B: on - line norm ,
A: followed by upsampling .
A: Then finally , we compute delta and we put the neural network also .
B: Right , and then in parallel with an a neural net . And then following neural net , some probably some orthogonalization .
B: Uh A: Yeah .
B: Um .
A: And finally frame dropping , which um , would be a neural network also , used for estimated silence probabilities .
A: And the input of this neural network would be somewhere between log mel bands or one of the earlier stages of the processing .
B: Mm - hmm .
B: So that 's sort of most of this stuff is yeah , is operating parallel with this other stuff .
A: Mm - hmm .
B: Yeah .
B: So the things that we , um , uh ,
B: I guess we sort of uh ,
B: There 's there 's some , uh , neat ideas for V A
B: So , I mean , in B: I think there 's sort of like There 's a bunch of tuning things to improve stuff .
B: There 's questions about various places where there 's an exponent , if it 's the right exponent , or ways that we 're estimating noise , that we can improve estimating noise .
B: And there 's gonna be a host of those .
B: But structurally it seemed like the things the main things that that we brought up that , uh , are are gonna need to get worked on seriously are , uh , uh , a  a significantly better VAD , uh , putting the neural net on , um , which , you know , we haven't been doing anything with , the , uh , neural net at the end there , and , uh , the , uh , opening up the second front .
B: Uh .
E: The other half of the channel ?
E: That what you mean ?
B: Yeah , yeah , I mean , cuz we we have we have , uh , uh , half the the , uh , data rate that they allow .
B: And , uh , so the initial thing which came from , uh , the meeting that we had down south was , uh , that , um , we 'll initially just put in a mel spectrum as the second one .
B: It 's , you know , cheap , easy .
B: Uh .
B: There 's a question about exactly how we do it .
B: We probably will go to something better later ,
E: Mm - hmm .
B: but the initial thing is that cepstra and spectra behave differently ,
B: so .
B: Um , <comment> I think Tony Robinson used to do I was saying this before . I think he used to do mel , uh , spectra and mel cepstra .
B: He used them as alternate features .
E: Hmm .
B: Put them together .
B: Uh .
E: So if you took the system the way it is now , the way it 's fro you 're gonna freeze it , and it ran it on the last evaluation , where it would it be ?
A: Mm - hmm .
A: It , uh ,
E: In terms of ranking ?
D: Second .
A: Ri - right now it 's second .
A: Um .
E: Mm - hmm .
B: Although you you know , you haven't tested it actually on the German and Danish ,
B: have you ?
A: No , we didn't .
A: No ,
A: um .
B: Yeah .
E: So on the ones that you did test it on it would have been second ?
B: Yeah .
B: Would it I mean But B: When you 're saying second , you 're comparing to the numbers that the , uh that the best system before got on , uh also without German and Danish ?
A: Yeah , yeah .
B: Yeah , OK .
D: And th the ranking actually didn't change after the German and Danish .
D: So , yeah .
B: Well ranking didn't before , but I 'm just asking where this is to where theirs was without the German and Danish ,
A: Yeah .
D: Yeah .
D: Yeah .
A: Mmm .
D: Yeah , yeah .
B: right ?
B: So .
E: Where where where were we actually on the last test ?
B: Oh , we were also esp essentially second , although there were there were I mean , we had a couple systems and they had a couple systems .
B: And so , I guess by that we were third ,
B: but I mean , there were two systems that were pretty close , that came from the same place .
E: Uh - huh .
E: I see .
E: OK .
B: Uh , so institutionally we were  we were second , with , uh , the third third system .
E: We 're so this second that you 're saying now is system - wide second ?
B: See B: Uh , no I think it 's also institutional ,
E: Still institutionally second ?
B: isn't it ?
B: Right ?
B: I mean , I think both of their systems probably A: Uh , we are between their two systems .
B: Oh , are we ?
A: So
A: I It is a triumph .
D: Yeah .
D: Their their first system is fifty - four point something .
B: Is it ?
D: And , uh , we are fifty - three point something .
D: And their second system is also fifty - three point something .
A: But everything is within the range of one one percent .
D: Yeah , one percent .
E: Oh , wow !
B: Yeah , so so basically they 're all they 're all pretty close .
E: That 's very close .
A: So .
D: Yeah .
E: Yeah .
B: And and , um , you know , in some sense we 're all doing fairly similar things .
B: Uh , I mean , one could argue about the LDA and so forth
B: but I I think , you know , in a lot of ways we 're doing very similar things .
B: But what what E: So how did they fill up this all these these bits ?
E: I mean , if we 're u
B: Um , why are we using half ?
E: Yeah .
B: Well , so you could you c
E: Or how are they using more than half , I guess maybe is what I B: Yeah , so I I think uh , you guys are closer to it than me , so correct me if I 'm wrong , but I I think that what 's going on is that in in both cases , some kind of normalization is done to deal with convola convolutional effects .
B: Uh , they have some cepstral modification ,
B: right ?
A: Mm - hmm .
B: In our case we have a couple things .
B: We have the on - line normalization and then we have the LDA RASTA .
B: And they seem to comple complement each other enough and be different enough that they both seem to help help us .
B: But in any event , they 're both doing the same sort of thing .
B: But there 's one difference .