Cue-preserving MMSE filter for binaural speech enhancement

Enzner, Gerald; Azarpour, Masoumeh; Siska, Jan

doi:10.1109/iwaenc.2016.7602941

Cited by 7 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…To combine noise reduction and binaural cue or IC preservation, two different paradigms are typically adopted (Doclo et al., 2018). In the first paradigm, two microphone signals, that is, one from each device, are filtered with the same (real-valued) spectro-temporal gain, which intrinsically guarantees binaural cue preservation for all sound sources (e.g., Baumgärtel et al., 2015; Bissmeyer & Goldsworthy, 2017; Enzner et al., 2016; Grimm et al., 2009; Kamkar-Parsi & Bouchard, 2011; Lotter & Vary, 2006; Reindl et al., 2013; Wittkop & Hohmann, 2003). In the second paradigm, considered in this study, all available microphone signals from both devices are processed by different (complex-valued) spatial filters.…”

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confidence: 99%

Perceptual Evaluation of Binaural MVDR-Based Algorithms to Preserve the Interaural Coherence of Diffuse Noise Fields

2020

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Besides improving speech intelligibility in background noise, another important objective of noise reduction algorithms for binaural hearing devices is preserving the spatial impression for the listener. In this study, we evaluate the performance of several recently proposed noise reduction algorithms based on the binaural minimum-variance-distortionless-response (MVDR) beamformer, which trade-off between noise reduction performance and preservation of the interaural coherence (IC) for diffuse noise fields. Aiming at a perceptually optimized result, this trade-off is determined based on the IC discrimination ability of the human auditory system. The algorithms are evaluated with normal-hearing participants for an anechoic scenario and a reverberant cafeteria scenario, in terms of both speech intelligibility using a matrix sentence test and spatial quality using a MUlti Stimulus test with Hidden Reference and Anchor (MUSHRA). The results show that all the binaural noise reduction algorithms are able to improve speech intelligibility compared with the unprocessed microphone signals, where partially preserving the IC of the diffuse noise field leads to a significant improvement in perceived spatial quality compared with the binaural MVDR beamformer while hardly affecting speech intelligibility.

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confidence: 99%

Perceptual Evaluation of Binaural MVDR-Based Algorithms to Preserve the Interaural Coherence of Diffuse Noise Fields

2020

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“…Thus in this paper, we also perform binaural speech enhancement, where we consider the signals received at the left and rightmost microphones as the binaural noisy signal. To perform the enhancement we consider the binaural enhancement framework proposed in [21], which is based on the MMSE criterion. This method applies a common gain on the left and right channels which leads to the preservation of the binaural cues.…”

Section: Enhancement Performancementioning

confidence: 99%

Hearing Aid-controlled Beamformer for Binaural Speech Enhancement Using a Model-based Approach

Kavalekalam

Nielsen

Christensen

et al. 2019

ICASSP 2019 - 2019 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP)

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The understanding of speech from a particular speaker in the presence of other interfering speakers can be severely degraded for a hearing impaired person. Beamforming techniques have been proven to be effective to improve the speech understanding in such scenarios. However, the number of microphones in a hearing aid (HA) is limited due to the space and power constraints present in the HA. In this paper, we propose to use an external device e.g., a microphone array, that can communicate with the HA to overcome this limitation. We propose a method to control this external device based on the look direction of the HA user. We show, by means of simulations, the robustness of the proposed method at very low SNRs in a reverberant scenario. Moreover, we have also conducted experiments that show the benefit of using this framework for binaural and monaural enhancement.

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“…and equating the result to zero, the frequency response of our proposed binaural cue-preserving MMSE filter reads [48] …”

Section: Binaural Cue-preserving Mmse Filtermentioning

confidence: 99%

Binaural noise reduction via cue-preserving MMSE filter and adaptive-blocking-based noise PSD estimation

Azarpour

Enzner

2017

EURASIP J. Adv. Signal Process.

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Binaural noise reduction, with applications for instance in hearing aids, has been a very significant challenge. This task relates to the optimal utilization of the available microphone signals for the estimation of the ambient noise characteristics and for the optimal filtering algorithm to separate the desired speech from the noise. The additional requirements of low computational complexity and low latency further complicate the design. A particular challenge results from the desired reconstruction of binaural speech input with spatial cue preservation. The latter essentially diminishes the utility of multiple-input/single-output filter-and-sum techniques such as beamforming. In this paper, we propose a comprehensive and effective signal processing configuration with which most of the aforementioned criteria can be met suitably. This relates especially to the requirement of efficient online adaptive processing for noise estimation and optimal filtering while preserving the binaural cues. Regarding noise estimation, we consider three different architectures: interaural (ITF), cross-relation (CR), and principal-component (PCA) target blocking. An objective comparison with two other noise PSD estimation algorithms demonstrates the superiority of the blocking-based noise estimators, especially the CR-based and ITF-based blocking architectures. Moreover, we present a new noise reduction filter based on minimum mean-square error (MMSE), which belongs to the class of common gain filters, hence being rigorous in terms of spatial cue preservation but also efficient and competitive for the acoustic noise reduction task. A formal real-time subjective listening test procedure is also developed in this paper. The proposed listening test enables a real-time assessment of the proposed computationally efficient noise reduction algorithms in a realistic acoustic environment, e.g., considering time-varying room impulse responses and the Lombard effect. The listening test outcome reveals that the signals processed by the blocking-based algorithms are significantly preferred over the noisy signal in terms of instantaneous noise attenuation. Furthermore, the listening test data analysis confirms the conclusions drawn based on the objective evaluation.

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Cue-preserving MMSE filter for binaural speech enhancement

Cited by 7 publications

References 28 publications

Perceptual Evaluation of Binaural MVDR-Based Algorithms to Preserve the Interaural Coherence of Diffuse Noise Fields

Perceptual Evaluation of Binaural MVDR-Based Algorithms to Preserve the Interaural Coherence of Diffuse Noise Fields

Hearing Aid-controlled Beamformer for Binaural Speech Enhancement Using a Model-based Approach

Binaural noise reduction via cue-preserving MMSE filter and adaptive-blocking-based noise PSD estimation

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