An algorithm for separating overlapping voices
Philip N. Denbigh, Hairong Luo · 1994
The objective is to separate overlapping sounds i.e. to achieve the 'cocktail party effect'. The main intended application is to realise an advanced hearing aid, but another possible use is as a front-end preprocessor for a speech recognition system. An algorithm has been developed and tests have been undertaken on seven subjects with normal hearing, in which the task is to recognise key words in a short sentence that is masked by a much stronger sentence from another speaker. In all cases an improved word score was obtained when the ratio of signal to interference was -12 dB. In many cases the improvement was very striking.