Evaluating the Efficacy of Traditional Machine Learning Models in Speaker Recognition: A Comparative Study Using the LibriSpeech Dataset

Abstract

The efficacy of machine learning models in speaker recognition tasks is critical for advancements in security systems, biometric authentication, and personalized user interfaces. This study provides a comparative analysis of three prominent machine learning models: Naive Bayes, Logistic Regression, and Gradient Boosting, using the LibriSpeech test-clean dataset—a corpus of read English speech from audiobooks designed for training and evaluating speech recognition systems. Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCCs) were extracted as features from the audio samples to represent the power spectrum of the speakers’ voices. The models were evaluated based on precision, recall, F1-score, and accuracy to determine their performance in correctly identifying speakers. Results indicate that Logistic Regression outperformed the other models, achieving nearly perfect scores across all metrics, suggesting its superior capability for linear classification in high-dimensional spaces. Naive Bayes also demonstrated high efficiency and robustness, despite the inherent assumption of feature independence, while Gradient Boosting showed slightly lower performance, potentially due to model complexity and overfitting. The study underscores the potential of simpler machine learning models to achieve high accuracy in speaker recognition tasks, particularly where computational resources are limited. However, limitations such as the controlled nature of the dataset and the focus on a single feature type were noted, with recommendations for future research to include more diverse environmental conditions and feature sets.