Joerg Bitzer

Reduction of gaussian, supergaussian, and impulsive noise by interpolation of the binary mask residual

In this paper, we present a new approach for noise reduction. A binary time-frequency (T-F) masking threshold criterion is proposed and analyzed with respect to the average spectra of music and noise disturbances. Modified autoregressive (AR) detection and AR interpolation are then applied to the residual signal of the binary masking process. The proposed method is able to reduce supergaussian and impulsive noise while ensuring preservation of the desired signal, which is crucial for professional high-quality audio restoration, and it is also suitable for Gaussian noise to a certain extent. The approach is compared to a state-of-the-art restoration algorithm by means of the objective measures signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) improvement and perceptual quality, and by subjective listening tests. The objective results as well as the listening tests show that the proposed algorithm is especially suited for supergaussian, grainy-sounding noise types, e.g., optical soundtrack noise of celluloid movie footage, or rain noise.

Editorial: advances in multimicrophone speech processing

1 School of Engineering, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, 52900, Israel 2 INRS-EMT, University of Quebec, 800 de la Gauchetiere Ouest, Montreal, QC, Canada H5A 1K6 3 Institute of Audiology and Hearing Science, University of Applied Sciences, Oldenburg/Ostfriesland/Wilhelmshaven Ofener Street 16, 26121 Oldenburg, Germany 4Department of Electrical Engineering, Technion — Israel Institute of Technology, Technion City, Haifa 32000, Israel 5Department of Electrical Engineering (ESAT-SCD), Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Kasteelpark Arenberg 10, 3001 Leuven, Belgium 6 Institute of Communication Acoustics, Ruhr-Universitaet Bochum, 44780 Bochum, Germany 7Western Australian Telecommunications Research Institute, The University of Western Australia, 35 Stirling Hwy, Crawley, 6009, Australia

Speech intelligibility and listening effort in every-day listening situations

Noise and reverberation affect speech intelligibility and increase listening effort. The impact is more severe for hearing-impaired listeners than for normal-hearing listeners and might lead to less social interactions, and reduced quality of life. While lab experiments are well controlled to get reliable outcomes, every-day listening situations are far more complex. Obtaining objective data of acoustical characteristics outside a laboratory is difficult, given the required equipment and its proper handling as well as privacy concerns emerging from audio recordings in a non-regulated and populated environment. Therefore, we developed a privacy-aware smartphone-based system that allows for long-term ecological momentary assessment. This system combines descriptions of the environment and subjective ratings on predefined scales with objective features derived from the acoustical signal. In a field study, forty-seven elderly listeners used the system for about four consecutive days. Results show that the lis...