Speech processing

Speech processing is the study of speech signals and the processing methods of these signals.

The signals are usually processed in a digital representation whereby speech processing can be seen as the intersection of digital signal processing and natural language processing.

Speech processing can be divided in the following categories:
 * Speech recognition, which deals with analysis of the linguistic content of a speech signal.
 * Speaker recognition, where the aim is to recognize the identity of the speaker.
 * Enhancement of speech signals, e.g. audio noise reduction,
 * Speech coding, a specialized form of data compression, is important in the telecommunication area.
 * Voice analysis for medical purposes, such as analysis of vocal loading and dysfunction of the vocal cords.
 * Speech synthesis: the artificial synthesis of speech, which usually means computer generated speech.
 * Speech enhancement: enhancing the perceptual quality of speech signal by removing the destructive effects of noise, limited capacity recording equipment, impairments, etc.