Oxford Wave Research in Turkey for IAFPA 2019

Last week (14-17 July 2019) some of the OWR team had the pleasure of attending the annual IAFPA (International Association for Forensic Phonetics and Acoustics) conference which was hosted this year in Istanbul, Turkey. 

It was a great opportunity for us to learn about the work of other members of the forensic phonetics and acoustics community from all around the world. One of the hot topics  IAFPA this year was cross-language speaker comparison (Croatian-Serbian, Czech-Persian and French-English to name a few) We were delighted to see how much of this and other research from Switzerland and the Netherlands made use of the capabilities of our forensic automatic speaker recognition software VOCALISE. 

The OWR team with the conference organiser
Burcu Önder Gürpinar 

We enjoyed every part of the conference but the highlight for us was undoubtedly our intern Linda’s poster winning the 2019 Best Student Poster award. As you can imagine, the team celebrated appropriately with Turkish beer. 

Linda presenting speaker profiling and speaker recognition using x-vectors (winner of best student poster award).

We also showcased our advances in the use of Deep Neural Network (DNN)s using x-vectors in automatic speaker comparison and speaker profiling, presented by Dr. Finnian Kelly, our Principal Research Scientist.

Finnian presenting our x-vector paper

Abstracts of our papers:
 
1. From i-vectors to x-vectors – a generational change in speaker recognition illustrated on the NFI-FRIDA database, Finnian Kelly, Anil Alexander, Oscar Forth and David van der Vloed, 14-17 July 2019, International Association of Forensic Phonetics and Acoustics (IAFPA) Conference, Istanbul, Turkey [download here]

2. The effect of background selection on the strength of evidence
David van der Vloed, Finnian Kelly and Anil Alexander, 14-17 July 2019, International Association of Forensic Phonetics and Acoustics (IAFPA) Conference, Istanbul, Turkey [download here]

3. One out of many: A sliding window approach to automatic speaker recognition with multi-speaker files Linda Gerlach, Finnian Kelly and Anil Alexander, 14-17 July 2019, International Association of Forensic Phonetics and Acoustics (IAFPA) Conference, Istanbul, Turkey [download here]

4. More than just identity: speaker recognition and speaker profiling using the GBR-ENG database, Linda Gerlach, Finnian Kelly and Anil Alexander 14-17 July 2019, International Association of Forensic Phonetics and Acoustics (IAFPA) Conference, Istanbul, Turkey (Winner of 2019 Best Student Paper award) [download here]

Special thanks to Burcu Önder Gürpinar for 4 fantastic days of forensics and we look forward to showing you what we have in store for IAFPA 2020.

Lend us your ears – Voice Similarity Research

Linda Gerlach, who is interning with us from the Philipps-Universität Marburg in Germany, is working on a collaborative project between Oxford Wave Research (OWR) and the University of Cambridge. This work forms part of her MA thesis and seeks to better understand the relation of voice similarity ratings by humans and by an automatic approach. Results from this work could potentially help develop forensically sound methods and solutions for voice lineups (where a witness has to pick out the voice of a perpetrator from a lineup of foils).

Link to the voice similarity survey

This test takes about 15 mins and you will be presented with pairs of voice recordings by male speakers and asked to judge the similarity of each pair.

Thank you!

Dr Finnian Kelly promoted to ‘Principal Research Scientist’ at Oxford Wave Research

Oxford Wave Research are pleased to announce the promotion of Dr Finnian Kelly to Principal Research Scientist.

Dr Finnian Kelly, Principal Research Scientist

Since joining Oxford Wave Research in 2016 as a Senior Research Scientist, Finnian has made significant contributions to the development of our speaker recognition, speaker diarization and speech & audio processing systems. He has successfully led the OWR team in two NIST speaker recognition evaluations. Finnian was with the Sigmedia Research Group at Trinity College, Dublin where he completed his PhD in 2013 and is a Research Associate with the Center for Robust Speech Systems (CRSS) at The University of Texas at Dallas. Finnian has published in (and acts as a reviewer for) many top-tier international conferences and journals, and has been an invited speaker at research labs in Europe and the US. Finnian is a member of the research committee of the International Association for Forensic Phonetics and Acoustics (IAFPA), and an affiliate member of the NIST OSAC Speaker Recognition subcommittee.

We are delighted that he will now be heading OWR’s research and leading us into new and exciting areas of work.

The team at Oxford Wave Research congratulate Finnian on his new role and look forward to working closely with him on future developments.

Oxford Wave Research are proud to be Platinum Sponsors of the 2019 AES International Conference on Audio Forensics.

Oxford Wave Research are proud to be Platinum Sponsors of the 2019 AES International Conference on Audio Forensics.

Taking place in Porto, Portugal on June 18-20th 2019, this conference is dedicated to exploring advances in the field of Audio Forensics by providing a platform for research related to the forensic application of speech/signal processing, acoustical analyses, audio authentication, and the examination of methodologies and best practices.  

We will be presenting our paper titled ‘Deep neural network based forensic automatic speaker recognition in VOCALISE using x-vectors’ and will be giving a Platinum talk onThe who, the when and the what – challenges in the development of real-world solutions for forensic audio processing.

This is the seventh AES conference devoted to the technical developments and practical approaches developing in the field of Audio Forensics and Oxford Wave Research will be demonstrating some of the latest (and coolest!) developments in speaker recognition and speech & audio processing.

The conference program will include paper presentations and discussions as well as Keynotes, Tutorials and Workshops on topics related to Forensic Audio.

//www.aes.org/conferences/2019/forensics/program.cfm

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Facebook: @oxfordwaveresarch

Twitter : @OxfordWave

www.oxfordwaveresearch.com/category/news/

We look forward to seeing you there!

Centre for Forensic Phonetics and Acoustics (CFPA) at the University of Zurich partners with Oxford Wave Research

Oxford Wave Research are delighted to be named partners of with the recently opened Centre for Forensic Phonetics and Acoustics (CFPA) at the University of Zurich. Opened on the 6th March 2019 the CFPA brings together research from a range of fields to address all areas of voice recognition in relation to forensic investigation.

Led by Prof. Volker Dellwo this centre will combine world-class research into forensic speaker recognition, voice disguise and voice line-ups with forensic services such as speaker profiling, speaker comparison, transcription, audio authentication and audio enhancement for both prosecution & defence.

As all great collaborations should, this one started with a few nice glasses in 2017 in Zurich.

Oxford Wave Research at Security and Policing 2019

Oxford Wave Research will be showing a whole host of exciting voice biometrics and audio processing products at the Home Office Security and Policing event from 5th-7th March at Farnborough International Exhibition and Conference Centre  – Stand P2

 

Our cutting-edge voice and audio-processing products include:

This year we will be be advance-previewing the latest deep neural network (DNN)-based  generation of our voice biometric product Vocalise.

We are also pleased to be providing a presentation on ‘Rapid identification of illegal video content through a networked audio and video fingerprint database’, which focuses on our WHISKERS system developed in response to the Home Office ‘call to action’ in support of online sexual exploitation prevention.

 

To find out more about these, and other Oxford Wave Research systems please contact us on sales@oxfordwaveresearch.com

 

OWR development team attending TAPAS TE2 Workshop on Speech Processing and Machine Learning

Oscar Forth and  Sam Kent, representing Oxford Wave Research’s R&D and software development team, are pleased to be attending the TAPAS TE2 Workshop on Speech Processing and Machine Learning hosted by INESC, Lisbon, Portugal.

They will be providing a short presentation and further developing our engagement with the TAPAS project.

TAPAS: Training Network on Automatic Processing of PAthological Speech, is an EU funded project looking at, and finding solutions to, the challenges facing people living with debilitating speech pathologies in an era where speech based technologies play an ever increasing role in our day to day lives.

https://www.tapas-etn-eu.org/

Home Office – SBRI Digital Forensics Challenge – MADCAT WHISKERS wins both Phase 1 and 2 funding

MADCAT WHISKERS

In August 2015, the Home Office challenged UK businesses and academia to come up with ways to improve the speed, efficiency, and effectiveness of recovering and analysing data from digital devices seized from suspects under investigation. This was conducted through the SBRI (Small Business Research Initiative) competition run by Innovate UK on behalf of the UK Home Office.

Oxford Wave Research participated in this highly competitive call and was one of the eleven businesses and universities selected for Phase 1 funding. OWR successfully completed Phase 1 and was one of the five companies from the Phase 1 participants that was further selected for Phase 2 of the competition.

The funding for this challenge helped us to enhance our existing MADCAT algorithms for extracting and comparing fingerprints in audio or video, to using GPU-acceleration to perform millions of comparisons in seconds and hundreds of millions in tens of minutes. We further developed this into a client and GPU-server based architecture capable of sharing and comparing audio fingerprint data for high speed cross-case comparisons.

Our R&D team attended the SBRI Digital Forensics Showcase Event in London on Friday, 3rd November 2017, to showcase MADCAT WHISKERS, our high-speed media fingerprint comparison solution that was developed as part of this challenge.

The showcase event provided an excellent opportunity to demonstrate how we used the Home Office funding and input to develop and improve a product which is now being used in certain UK law enforcement agencies with tremendous results.

To find out more about our software please contact us directly at info@oxfordwaveresearch.com

TAPAS Kick Off

Oscar and Nikki are excited to be attending the kick off of the TAPAS project in Switzerland. OWR are privileged to be industry partners on this exciting new project which brings together some of the best academic and industry leaders in Europe.

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SpectrumView and SpectrumView + release V2.2 

As SpectrumView approaches 400,000 downloads, we continue to be intrigued and amazed by the diverse applications our users have found for this real-time frequency analyser app, such as detecting ultrasonic high frequency noises, school physics experiments, detecting bats, recording wildlife and birdsong, to mention just a few.

We have had some great feedback and many feature requests which have been prioritised and we are pleased to roll out with the release of SpectrumView V2.2.

This version is fully compatible with iOS11 and includes the following new features;

  • Data-snapshot capability – ability to save the spectrogram or spectrum analyser data you are exporting and view this in Excel, Matlab, or any other software that supports CSV formatted files.
  • Over the air downloads – ability to download recordings, data snapshots and images from SpectrumView to other devices using a web-interface over WiFi
  • Simultaneous Playback and visualisation – ability to play, pause and scrub through recordings while viewing the spectrograms
  • Share files with other apps – share your SpectrumView recordings with other apps on your device such as ‘Whatsapp’, ‘Facebook Messenger’ etc or ‘Airdrop’ them to your friends.

You’ll be pleased to know that the most used and favourite features from SpectrumView 2.0 are still available and have been enhanced further. These include;

  • Saving location info of the recording – Never forget where a clip was recorded
  • Allow Peak hold – Enables you to freeze and hold the peaks of the frequency envelope (three holds in three colours) in Spectrum Analyser mode
  • Logarithmic scale – Enables toggling between logarithmic and linear scale modes in Spectrogram and Spectrum Analyser view
  • Auto lock disabled during playback and recordings – Prevents the device from automatically locking (if enabled), for uninterrupted recording/playback
  • Open from other applications – Allows audio clips to be opened in SpectrumView from other applications (e.g. Mail, Facebook, and iCloud Drive)
  • In-App Purchases – Only purchase the features you need from SpectrumView Free

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