Improving the perceptual quality of ideal binary masked speech
File(s)Paper_v30.pdf (194.66 KB)
Accepted version
Author(s)
Lightburn, L
De Sena, E
Moore, AH
Naylor, PA
Brookes, D
Type
Conference Paper
Abstract
It is known that applying a time-frequency binary mask to very noisy speech can improve its intelligibility but results in poor perceptual quality. In this paper we propose a new approach to applying a binary mask that combines the intelligibility gains of conventional binary masking with the perceptual quality gains of a classical speech enhancer. The binary mask is not applied directly as a time-frequency gain as in most previous studies. Instead, the mask is used to supply prior information to a classical speech enhancer about the probability of speech presence in different time-frequency regions. Using an oracle ideal binary mask, we show that the proposed method results in a higher predicted quality than other methods of applying a binary mask whilst preserving the improvements in predicted intelligibility.
Date Issued
2017-06-19
Date Acceptance
2016-12-12
Citation
2017 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP), 2017, pp.661-665
ISSN
1520-6149
Publisher
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
Start Page
661
End Page
665
Journal / Book Title
2017 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP)
Copyright Statement
© 2017 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.
Sponsor
Engineering & Physical Science Research Council (EPSRC)
Grant Number
EP/M026698/1
Source
2017 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP)
Subjects
Science & Technology
Technology
Acoustics
Engineering, Electrical & Electronic
Engineering
Binary mask
speech quality
speech intelligibility
speech enhancement
speech presence probability
SPECTRAL AMPLITUDE ESTIMATOR
NOISE-REDUCTION
NEURAL-NETWORKS
INTELLIGIBILITY
ENHANCEMENT
SEPARATION
Publication Status
Published
Start Date
2017-03-05
Finish Date
2017-03-09
Coverage Spatial
New Orleans, LA, USA
Date Publish Online
2017-06-19