Enhancing Speech Emotion Recognition Using Dual Feature Extraction Encoders

Abstract

Understanding and identifying emotional cues in human speech is a crucial aspect of human–computer communication. The application of computer technology in dissecting and deciphering emotions, along with the extraction of relevant emotional characteristics from speech, forms a significant part of this process. The objective of this study was to architect an innovative framework for speech emotion recognition predicated on spectrograms and semantic feature transcribers, aiming to bolster performance precision by acknowledging the conspicuous inadequacies in extant methodologies and rectifying them. To procure invaluable attributes for speech detection, this investigation leveraged two divergent strategies. Primarily, a wholly convolutional neural network model was engaged to transcribe speech spectrograms. Subsequently, a cutting-edge Mel-frequency cepstral coefficient feature abstraction approach was adopted and integrated with Speech2Vec for semantic feature encoding. These dual forms of attributes underwent individual processing before they were channeled into a long short-term memory network and a comprehensive connected layer for supplementary representation. By doing so, we aimed to bolster the sophistication and efficacy of our speech emotion detection model, thereby enhancing its potential to accurately recognize and interpret emotion from human speech. The proposed mechanism underwent a rigorous evaluation process employing two distinct databases: RAVDESS and EMO-DB. The outcome displayed a predominant performance when juxtaposed with established models, registering an impressive accuracy of 94.8% on the RAVDESS dataset and a commendable 94.0% on the EMO-DB dataset. This superior performance underscores the efficacy of our innovative system in the realm of speech emotion recognition, as it outperforms current frameworks in accuracy metrics.