NOPE-HYPE: A Structured Simulation Workflow for Robust Speech-to-Text Across Diverse Acoustic Environments
Niramay M. Patel, Bibek Behera, Raksha Sharma
Abstract
Robust speech-to-text translation systems should perform reliably across diverse acoustic conditions, yet practical pipelines lack controllable tools for systematic environment exploration. Large speech models remain sensitive to unseen acoustic conditions, as training data rarely cover the full range of real environments.We present NOPEHYPE, a structured training workflow that combines a controllable environment simulator, coverage-optimal environment reduction on Power Spectral Density (PSD) templates, and a small, interpretable hyperparameter search over simulator knobs. We show that simulator-generated noise achieves performance comparable to balanced realnoise training across Whisper and SeamlessM4T models, provide principled environment prototype sets, and identify practical default simulator configurations from a structured 27-run hyperparameter sweep.