Precision matrix modelling for large vocabulary continuous speech recognition
KC Sim, Mark Gales · Cambridge University Engineering Department Publications Database · 2004
Recently, structured precision matrix models were found to outperform the conventional diagonal covariance matrix models. Minimum phone error discriminative training of these models gave very good unadapted performance on large vocabulary continuous speech recognition systems. To obtain state-of-the-art performance, it is important to apply adaptation techniques efficiently to these models. In this paper, simple row-by-row iterative formulae are described for both MLLR mean and constrained MLLR transform estimations of these models. These update formulae are derived within the standard expectation maximisation framework and are guaranteed to increase the likelihood of the adaptation data. Efficient approximate schemes for these adaptation methods are also investigated to further reduce the computation. Experimental results are presented based on the MPE trained Subspace for Precision and Mean models, evaluated on both broadcast news and conversational telephone speech English tasks. 1.