Speech and Audio Processing in Adverse Environments


Book Description

Users of signal processing systems are never satis?ed with the system they currently use. They are constantly asking for higher quality, faster perf- mance, more comfort and lower prices. Researchers and developers should be appreciative for this attitude. It justi?es their constant e?ort for improved systems. Better knowledge about biological and physical interrelations c- ing along with more powerful technologies are their engines on the endless road to perfect systems. This book is an impressive image of this process. After “Acoustic Echo 1 and Noise Control” published in 2004 many new results lead to “Topics in 2 Acoustic Echo and Noise Control” edited in 2006 . Today – in 2008 – even morenew?ndingsandsystemscouldbecollectedinthisbook.Comparingthe contributions in both edited volumes progress in knowledge and technology becomesclearlyvisible:Blindmethodsandmultiinputsystemsreplace“h- ble” low complexity systems. The functionality of new systems is less and less limited by the processing power available under economic constraints. The editors have to thank all the authors for their contributions. They cooperated readily in our e?ort to unify the layout of the chapters, the ter- nology, and the symbols used. It was a pleasure to work with all of them. Furthermore, it is the editors concern to thank Christoph Baumann and the Springer Publishing Company for the encouragement and help in publi- ing this book.




Speech and Audio Signal Processing


Book Description

When Speech and Audio Signal Processing published in 1999, it stood out from its competition in its breadth of coverage and its accessible, intutiont-based style. This book was aimed at individual students and engineers excited about the broad span of audio processing and curious to understand the available techniques. Since then, with the advent of the iPod in 2001, the field of digital audio and music has exploded, leading to a much greater interest in the technical aspects of audio processing. This Second Edition will update and revise the original book to augment it with new material describing both the enabling technologies of digital music distribution (most significantly the MP3) and a range of exciting new research areas in automatic music content processing (such as automatic transcription, music similarity, etc.) that have emerged in the past five years, driven by the digital music revolution. New chapter topics include: Psychoacoustic Audio Coding, describing MP3 and related audio coding schemes based on psychoacoustic masking of quantization noise Music Transcription, including automatically deriving notes, beats, and chords from music signals. Music Information Retrieval, primarily focusing on audio-based genre classification, artist/style identification, and similarity estimation. Audio Source Separation, including multi-microphone beamforming, blind source separation, and the perception-inspired techniques usually referred to as Computational Auditory Scene Analysis (CASA).




Signal Analysis and Prediction


Book Description

Methods of signal analysis represent a broad research topic with applications in many disciplines, including engineering, technology, biomedicine, seismography, eco nometrics, and many others based upon the processing of observed variables. Even though these applications are widely different, the mathematical background be hind them is similar and includes the use of the discrete Fourier transform and z-transform for signal analysis, and both linear and non-linear methods for signal identification, modelling, prediction, segmentation, and classification. These meth ods are in many cases closely related to optimization problems, statistical methods, and artificial neural networks. This book incorporates a collection of research papers based upon selected contri butions presented at the First European Conference on Signal Analysis and Predic tion (ECSAP-97) in Prague, Czech Republic, held June 24-27, 1997 at the Strahov Monastery. Even though the Conference was intended as a European Conference, at first initiated by the European Association for Signal Processing (EURASIP), it was very gratifying that it also drew significant support from other important scientific societies, including the lEE, Signal Processing Society of IEEE, and the Acoustical Society of America. The organizing committee was pleased that the re sponse from the academic community to participate at this Conference was very large; 128 summaries written by 242 authors from 36 countries were received. In addition, the Conference qualified under the Continuing Professional Development Scheme to provide PD units for participants and contributors.




Advances in Digital Speech Transmission


Book Description

Speech processing and speech transmission technology are expanding fields of active research. New challenges arise from the 'anywhere, anytime' paradigm of mobile communications, the ubiquitous use of voice communication systems in noisy environments and the convergence of communication networks toward Internet based transmission protocols, such as Voice over IP. As a consequence, new speech coding, new enhancement and error concealment, and new quality assessment methods are emerging. Advances in Digital Speech Transmission provides an up-to-date overview of the field, including topics such as speech coding in heterogeneous communication networks, wideband coding, and the quality assessment of wideband speech. Provides an insight into the latest developments in speech processing and speech transmission, making it an essential reference to those working in these fields Offers a balanced overview of technology and applications Discusses topics such as speech coding in heterogeneous communications networks, wideband coding, and the quality assessment of the wideband speech Explains speech signal processing in hearing instruments and man-machine interfaces from applications point of view Covers speech coding for Voice over IP, blind source separation, digital hearing aids and speech processing for automatic speech recognition Advances in Digital Speech Transmission serves as an essential link between the basics and the type of technology and applications (prospective) engineers work on in industry labs and academia. The book will also be of interest to advanced students, researchers, and other professionals who need to brush up their knowledge in this field.




Speech Dereverberation


Book Description

Speech Dereverberation gathers together an overview, a mathematical formulation of the problem and the state-of-the-art solutions for dereverberation. Speech Dereverberation presents current approaches to the problem of reverberation. It provides a review of topics in room acoustics and also describes performance measures for dereverberation. The algorithms are then explained with mathematical analysis and examples that enable the reader to see the strengths and weaknesses of the various techniques, as well as giving an understanding of the questions still to be addressed. Techniques rooted in speech enhancement are included, in addition to a treatment of multichannel blind acoustic system identification and inversion. The TRINICON framework is shown in the context of dereverberation to be a generalization of the signal processing for a range of analysis and enhancement techniques. Speech Dereverberation is suitable for students at masters and doctoral level, as well as established researchers.




Speech Enhancement


Book Description

We live in a noisy world! In all applications (telecommunications, hands-free communications, recording, human-machine interfaces, etc.) that require at least one microphone, the signal of interest is usually contaminated by noise and reverberation. As a result, the microphone signal has to be "cleaned" with digital signal processing tools before it is played out, transmitted, or stored. This book is about speech enhancement. Different well-known and state-of-the-art methods for noise reduction, with one or multiple microphones, are discussed. By speech enhancement, we mean not only noise reduction but also dereverberation and separation of independent signals. These topics are also covered in this book. However, the general emphasis is on noise reduction because of the large number of applications that can benefit from this technology. The goal of this book is to provide a strong reference for researchers, engineers, and graduate students who are interested in the problem of signal and speech enhancement. To do so, we invited well-known experts to contribute chapters covering the state of the art in this focused field. TOC:Introduction.- Study of the Wiener Filter for Noise Reduction.- Statistical Methods for the Enhancement of Noisy Speech.- Single- und Multi-Microphone Spectral Amplitude Estimation Using a Super-Gaussian Speech Model.- From Volatility Modeling of Financial Time-Series to Stochastic Modeling and Enhancement of Speech Signals.- Single-Microphone Noise Suppression for 3G Handsets Based on Weighted Noise Estimation.- Signal Subspace Techniques for Speech Enhancement.- Speech Enhancement: Application of the Kalman Filter in the Estimate-Maximize (EM) Framework.- Speech Distortion Weighted Multichannel Wiener Filtering Techniques for Noise Reduction.- Adpative Microphone Arrays Employing Spatial Quadratic Soft Constraints and Spectral Shaping.- Single-Microphone Blind Dereverberation.- Separation and Dereverberation of Speech Signals with Multiple Microphones.- Frequency-Domain Blind Source Separation.- Subband Based Blind Source Separation.- Real-Time Blind Source Separation for Moving Speech Signals.- Separation of Speech by Computational Auditory Scene Analysis




Techniques for Noise Robustness in Automatic Speech Recognition


Book Description

Automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems are finding increasing use in everyday life. Many of the commonplace environments where the systems are used are noisy, for example users calling up a voice search system from a busy cafeteria or a street. This can result in degraded speech recordings and adversely affect the performance of speech recognition systems. As the use of ASR systems increases, knowledge of the state-of-the-art in techniques to deal with such problems becomes critical to system and application engineers and researchers who work with or on ASR technologies. This book presents a comprehensive survey of the state-of-the-art in techniques used to improve the robustness of speech recognition systems to these degrading external influences. Key features: Reviews all the main noise robust ASR approaches, including signal separation, voice activity detection, robust feature extraction, model compensation and adaptation, missing data techniques and recognition of reverberant speech. Acts as a timely exposition of the topic in light of more widespread use in the future of ASR technology in challenging environments. Addresses robustness issues and signal degradation which are both key requirements for practitioners of ASR. Includes contributions from top ASR researchers from leading research units in the field




Microphone Arrays


Book Description

This is the first book to provide a single complete reference on microphone arrays. Top researchers in this field contributed articles documenting the current state of the art in microphone array research, development and technological application.




Speech Enhancement


Book Description

With the proliferation of mobile devices and hearing devices, including hearing aids and cochlear implants, there is a growing and pressing need to design algorithms that can improve speech intelligibility without sacrificing quality. Responding to this need, Speech Enhancement: Theory and Practice, Second Edition introduces readers to the basic pr




Hearing Aids


Book Description

This volume will serve as the first Handbook of its kind in the area of hearing aid research, often the least-defined, least-understood, part of the multi-disciplinary research process. Most scientific training is very advanced within the particular disciplines but provides little opportunity for systematic introduction to the issues and obstacles that prevent effective hearing-aid related research. This area has emerged as one of critical importance, as signified by a single specialized meeting (the International Hearing Aid Conference, IHCON) that brings together specialists from the disparate disciplines involved, including both university and industry researchers. Identification of the key steps that enable high-impact basic science to ultimately result in significant clinical advances that improve patient outcome is critical. This volume will provide an overview of current key issues in hearing aid research from the perspective of many different disciplines, not only from the perspective of the key funding agencies, but also from the scientists and clinicians who are currently involved in hearing aid research. It will offer insight into the experience, current technology and future technology that can help improve hearing aids, as scientists and clinicians typically have little or no formal training over the whole range of the individual disciplines that are relevant. The selection and coverage of topics insures that it will have lasting impact, well beyond immediate, short-term, or parochial concerns. ​