Loud and Clear: Dynamic Activation Steering for Improving Speech Intelligibility in Noisy Environments

Abstract:Speech becomes less intelligible in noisy environments, and humans naturally adapt their voice to compensate. Inspired by this behavior, we investigate whether a text-to-speech (TTS) model can be guided to produce more intelligible speech using activation steering, without retraining. We focus on two characteristics of the Lombard effect: increased vocal effort and hyper-articulation. We introduce a prompt-relative steering mechanism that prevents steering effects from accumulating during generation while allowing their strength to be adjusted dynamically. Across seen and unseen speakers and multiple languages, our method produces systematic changes in Lombard-related acoustic features, preserves speaker similarity (89-95%), and reduces WER under background noise by 7-22% at 1 dB SNR. These results show that pretrained TTS models can be dynamically controlled to generate more intelligible speech without retraining.

Sound (cs.SD); Computation and Language (cs.CL)

arXiv:2610.07647 [cs.SD]

(or arXiv:2610.07647v1 [cs.SD] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2610.07647 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)

arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website.

Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them.

Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs.