RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 DAVID: An open-source platform for real-time emotional speech transformation: With 25 applications in the behavioral sciences
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 038133
DO 10.1101/038133
A1 Laura Rachman
A1 Marco Liuni
A1 Pablo Arias
A1 Andreas Lind
A1 Petter Johansson
A1 Lars Hall
A1 Daniel Richardson
A1 Katsumi Watanabe
A1 Stéphanie Dubal
A1 Jean-Julien Aucouturier
YR 2016
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/02/01/038133.abstract
AB We present an open-source software platform that transforms the emotions expressed by speech signals using audio effects like pitch shifting, inflection, vibrato, and filtering. The emotional transformations can be applied to any audio file, but can also run in real-time (with less than 20-millisecond latency), using live input from a microphone. We anticipate that this tool will be useful for the study of emotions in psychology and neuroscience, because it enables a high level of control over the acoustical and emotional content of experimental stimuli in a variety of laboratory situations, including real-time social situations. We present here results of a series of validation experiments showing that transformed emotions are recognized at above-chance levels in the French, English, Swedish and Japanese languages, with a naturalness comparable to natural speech. Then, we provide a list of twenty-five experimental ideas applying this new tool to important topics in the behavioral sciences.