In 2005, for the first time, the 16th Conference on Electronic Speech Signal Processing has crossed the border of Germany and will be held in Prague. As a novelty, this year, the 16th ESSP will take place together with the traditional 15th Czech-German Workshop on Speech Processing which, since 1993, has been a joint action of J. W. Goethe University, Frankfurt, Technical University, Dresden, Charles University in Prague and the Institute of Radio Engineering and Electronics of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic.
Merging the two traditional scientific events manifests itself by a large number of interesting oral contributions and posters which will be presented at the conference. This proceedings volume includes 66 papers by 116 authors which is the peak in this conference series so far.
As a special highlight of this conference, the close connection of phonetics and speech processing is addressed in a large number of papers. It is well-known that this connection is very important for the further development of speech technology. In Prague, the place of this conference, there is a long tradition of both fields.