Sidechain harmonic enhancement of noise corrupted speech for hearing impaired listeners

This work presents a single channel speech enhancement approach aimed at improving speech clarity for hearing impaired listeners under challenging listening conditions. The proposed method applies nonlinear distortions to speech components isolated from the observed noisy signal using aggressive speech enhancement. The enhanced components are then mixed back into the noisy signal. The results show that the proposed approach significantly improves speech clarity in noise.

[1]  Brian C. J. Moore,et al.  The Effect of Nonlinear Distortion on the Perceived Quality of Music and Speech Signals , 2003 .

[2]  Pascal Scalart,et al.  Speech enhancement based on a priori signal to noise estimation , 1996, 1996 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing Conference Proceedings.

[3]  S. Biyiksiz,et al.  Multirate digital signal processing , 1985, Proceedings of the IEEE.

[4]  Yi Hu,et al.  A comparative intelligibility study of single-microphone noise reduction algorithms. , 2007, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[5]  Ronaldus Maria Aarts,et al.  Audio Bandwidth Extension: Application of Psychoacoustics, Signal Processing and Loudspeaker Design , 2004 .

[6]  Richard C. Hendriks,et al.  Unbiased MMSE-Based Noise Power Estimation With Low Complexity and Low Tracking Delay , 2012, IEEE Transactions on Audio, Speech, and Language Processing.

[7]  Herman J. M. Steeneken,et al.  Assessment for automatic speech recognition: II. NOISEX-92: A database and an experiment to study the effect of additive noise on speech recognition systems , 1993, Speech Commun..

[8]  D D Dirks,et al.  Subjective judgements of clarity and intelligibility for filtered stimuli with equivalent speech intelligibility index predictions. , 1998, Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR.

[9]  Jonathan G. Fiscus,et al.  DARPA TIMIT:: acoustic-phonetic continuous speech corpus CD-ROM, NIST speech disc 1-1.1 , 1993 .

[10]  R. Brennan,et al.  A flexible filterbank structure for extensive signal manipulations in digital hearing aids , 1998, ISCAS '98. Proceedings of the 1998 IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (Cat. No.98CH36187).

[11]  Jonathan G. Fiscus,et al.  Darpa Timit Acoustic-Phonetic Continuous Speech Corpus CD-ROM {TIMIT} | NIST , 1993 .

[12]  D. Wang,et al.  Computational Auditory Scene Analysis: Principles, Algorithms, and Applications , 2008, IEEE Trans. Neural Networks.

[13]  Philipos C. Loizou,et al.  Speech Enhancement: Theory and Practice , 2007 .

[14]  Frank Wannemaker,et al.  Audio Bandwidth Extension Application Of Psychoacoustics Signal Processing And Loudspeaker Design , 2016 .

[15]  S. Soli,et al.  Development of the Hearing in Noise Test for the measurement of speech reception thresholds in quiet and in noise. , 1994, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[16]  DeLiang Wang,et al.  An algorithm to improve speech recognition in noise for hearing-impaired listeners. , 2013, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[17]  David Malah,et al.  Speech enhancement using a minimum mean-square error log-spectral amplitude estimator , 1984, IEEE Trans. Acoust. Speech Signal Process..

[18]  Ephraim Speech enhancement using a minimum mean square error short-time spectral amplitude estimator , 1984 .

[19]  Udo Zölzer,et al.  DAFX: Digital Audio Effects , 2011 .

[20]  Yang Lu,et al.  An algorithm that improves speech intelligibility in noise for normal-hearing listeners. , 2009, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[21]  Philipos C. Loizou,et al.  Reasons why Current Speech-Enhancement Algorithms do not Improve Speech Intelligibility and Suggested Solutions , 2011, IEEE Transactions on Audio, Speech, and Language Processing.

[22]  Guy J. Brown,et al.  Computational Auditory Scene Analysis: Principles, Algorithms, and Applications , 2006 .

[23]  Deniz Başkent,et al.  Genetic algorithms: Are they the future of hearing aid fittings? , 2008 .

[24]  Bob Katz,et al.  Mastering Audio: The Art and the Science , 2002 .

[25]  Timo Gerkmann,et al.  Generalization of supervised learning for binary mask estimation , 2014, 2014 14th International Workshop on Acoustic Signal Enhancement (IWAENC).

[26]  Udo Zoelzer,et al.  DAFX: Digital Audio Effects , 2011 .

[27]  A.V. Oppenheim,et al.  Enhancement and bandwidth compression of noisy speech , 1979, Proceedings of the IEEE.