Data Augmentation for deep neural network acoustic modeling

Abstract

Data augmentation using label preserving transformations has been shown to be effective for neural network training to make invariant predictions. In this paper we focus on data augmentation approaches to acoustic modeling using deep neural networks (DNNs) for automatic speech recognition (ASR). We first investigate a modified version of a previously studied approach using vocal tract length perturbation (VTLP) and then propose a novel data augmentation approach based on stochastic feature mapping (SFM) in a speaker adaptive feature space. Experiments were conducted on Bengali and Assamese limited language packs (LLPs) from the IARPA Babel program. Improved recognition performance has been observed after both cross-entropy (CE) and state-level minimum Bayes risk (sMBR) training of DNN models.