A comparative analysis of speech rate and perception in radio bulletins
Speech rate is one of the most important elements in a news presentation, e specially on radio, a sound medium. Accordingly, this study seeks to compare broadcasters’ speech rate and the number of pauses in 40 news bulletins from the BBC (United Kingdom), Radio France (France), RAI (Italy), and RNE (Spain). Most authors addressing the medium of radio recommend a speech rate of between 160 and 180 words per minute (wpm). If this rate is considered, only one radio station, BBC, would be within the suitable limits. Instead, higher speeds and fewer pauses have been identified in the RAI and RNE bulletins. The second part of this study attempts to analyze whether perception in the news can be affected by different speech rates. The findings indicate that the extent to which the individuals surveyed experience subjective assessment varies according to the speech rate.
File sharing networks are one of the most popular Internet applications nowadays. Despite its success, these networks have two main issues: the ineffectiveness in downloading content that few users in the network have and the high incidence of getting files different from the ones the user supposed to ask for. This paper presents new mechanisms for indexing and segmentation of audio content, aiming to improve the user experience when facing the problems previously mentioned. Our proposal has been validated through tests, with good results in comparison with the approach used by popular file sharing applications.