Speech enhancement with multichannel Wiener filter techniques in multimicrophone binaural hearing aids

Bogaert, Tim Van den; Doclo, Simon; Wouters, Jan; Moonen, Marc

doi:10.1121/1.3023069

Cited by 110 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…The reverberant signals were generated by convolving the clean signals with real room impulse responses, recorded by Van den Bogaert et al (2009), with average reverberation time equal to T 60 = 1.0 s and direct-to-reverberant (DRR) ratio of −0.49 dB for a 5.50 m × 4.50 m × 3.10 m (length × width × height) room. The distance between the single-source signal and the microphone was 1 m. Speech-shaped noise was added to the reverberant signals at 0 dB and 5 dB SNRs, i.e., the reverberant speech signal served as the target signal in the SNR computation.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tackling the Combined Effects of Reverberation and Masking Noise Using Ideal Channel Selection

Hazrati

Loizou

2012

J Speech Lang Hear Res

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Purpose A new signal processing algorithm is proposed and evaluated in this study for the suppression of the combined effects of reverberation and noise. Method The proposed algorithm decomposes, on a short-term basis (every 20 ms), the reverberant stimuli into a number of channels and retains only a subset of the channels satisfying a signal-to-reverberant ratio (SRR) criterion. The construction of this criterion assumes access to a priori knowledge of the target (anechoic) signal and the aim of the present study is to assess the full potential of the proposed channel-selection algorithm assuming that this criterion can be estimated accurately. Listening tests were conducted with normal-hearing listeners to assess the performance of the proposed algorithm in highly reverberant conditions (T60 = 1.0 s) which included additive noise at 0 and 5 dB SNR. Results A substantial gain in intelligibility was obtained in both reverberant and combined reverberant and noise conditions. The mean intelligibility scores improved by 44 and 33 percentage points at 0 and 5 dB SNR reverberant+noise conditions. Feature analysis of the consonant confusion matrices revealed that the transmission of voicing information was most negatively affected, followed by manner and place of articulation. Conclusions The proposed algorithm was found to produce substantial gains in intelligibility, and this benefit was attributed to the ability of the proposed SRR criterion to accurately detect voiced/unvoiced boundaries. Detection of those boundaries is postulated to be critical for better perception of voicing information and manner of articulation.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tackling the Combined Effects of Reverberation and Masking Noise Using Ideal Channel Selection

Hazrati

Loizou

2012

J Speech Lang Hear Res

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“…As reference algorithms, we used three variants of the MVDR beamformer: (a) a bilateral MVDR beamformer where each hearing aid operates independently of the other (i.e., two separate two-microphone beamformers on each hearing aid), labeled "BIL", (b) a non-spatial cue preserving binaural MVDR beamformer (i.e., using y bfL and y bfR ), and (c) the binaural MVDR beamformer with partial noise estimation as described in Section 3.3, labeled "MVDR-N, " where we have used the frequencyindependent mixing factor η = 0.2 as proposed in [36].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Speech enhancement for multimicrophone binaural hearing aids aiming to preserve the spatial auditory scene

Thiemann

Müller

Marquardt

et al. 2016

EURASIP J. Adv. Signal Process.

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Modern binaural hearing aids utilize multimicrophone speech enhancement algorithms to enhance signals in terms of signal-to-noise ratio, but they may distort the interaural cues that allow the user to localize sources, in particular, suppressed interfering sources or background noise. In this paper, we present a novel algorithm that enhances the target signal while aiming to maintain the correct spatial rendering of both the target signal as well as the background noise. We use a bimodal approach, where a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) estimator controls a binary decision mask, switching between the output signals of a binaural minimum variance distortionless response (MVDR) beamformer and scaled reference microphone signals. We show that the proposed selective binaural beamformer (SBB) can enhance the target signal while maintaining the overall spatial rendering of the acoustic scene.

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“…Some schemes for noise reduction explicitly attempt to preserve binaural cues (Van den Bogaert et al, 2009). …”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluation of a method for enhancing interaural level differences at low frequencies

Moore¹,

Kolarik²,

Stone³

et al. 2016

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

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A method (called binaural enhancement) for enhancing interaural level differences at low frequencies, based on estimates of interaural time differences, was developed and evaluated. Five conditions were compared, all using simulated hearing-aid processing: (1) Linear amplification with frequency-response shaping; (2) binaural enhancement combined with linear amplification and frequency-response shaping; (3) slow-acting four-channel amplitude compression with independent compression at the two ears (AGC4CH); (4) binaural enhancement combined with four-channel compression (BE-AGC4CH); and (5) four-channel compression but with the compression gains synchronized across ears. Ten hearing-impaired listeners were tested, and gains and compression ratios for each listener were set to match targets prescribed by the CAM2 fitting method. Stimuli were presented via headphones, using virtualization methods to simulate listening in a moderately reverberant room. The intelligibility of speech at ±60° azimuth in the presence of competing speech on the opposite side of the head at ±60° azimuth was not affected by the binaural enhancement processing. Sound localization was significantly better for condition BE-AGC4CH than for condition AGC4CH for a sentence, but not for broadband noise, lowpass noise, or lowpass amplitude-modulated noise. The results suggest that the binaural enhancement processing can improve localization for sounds with distinct envelope fluctuations.

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Speech enhancement with multichannel Wiener filter techniques in multimicrophone binaural hearing aids

Cited by 110 publications

References 26 publications

Tackling the Combined Effects of Reverberation and Masking Noise Using Ideal Channel Selection

Tackling the Combined Effects of Reverberation and Masking Noise Using Ideal Channel Selection

Speech enhancement for multimicrophone binaural hearing aids aiming to preserve the spatial auditory scene

Evaluation of a method for enhancing interaural level differences at low frequencies

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