Speech processing is the study of speech signals and the processing methods of these signals.

The signals are usually processed in a digital representation whereby speech processing can be seen as the intersection of digital signal processing and natural language processing.

Speech processing can be divided in the following categories:

• Speech recognition, which deals with analysis of the linguistic content of a speech signal.
• Speaker recognition, where the aim is to recognise the identity of the speaker.
• Enhancement of speech signals, e.g. Noise reduction,
• Speech coding for compression and transmission of speech. See also Telecommunication.
• Voice analysis for medical purposes, such as analysis of vocal loading and dysfunction of the vocal cords.
• Artificial voice : the artificial synthesis of speech, which usually means computer generated speech and the speech recognition by computers.