2015 IEEE Workshop on Applications of Signal Processing to Audio and Acoustics, New Paltz, NY, October 19, 2015

Exploration of the Additivity Approximation for Spectral Magnitudes

Stephen D. Voran

Abstract: The separation of acoustic signals is often accomplished through subtractive decompositions of frequency-domain representations. This is typically enabled by the zero phase approximation or the uncorrelated signals approximation but both of these are very coarse approximations in the mathematical sense. We investigate this disconnect between what works in practice and what is mathematically correct. We conduct a broad search for a domain where the additivity of spectral magnitudes is best satisfied. We apply objective estimators to time-domain reconstructions to characterize the true auditory impact of the magnitude additivity approximation. Our results show the auditory impacts of additivity approximations and allow comparison with the impact of using mixture phase and exact magnitudes in the time-domain reconstruction.

Keywords: noise reduction; speech enhancement; auditory scene analysis; compositional model; noise suppression; source separation; spectral subtraction

For technical information concerning this report, contact:

Stephen D. Voran
Institute for Telecommunication Sciences
(303) 497-3839
svoran@ntia.gov

To request a reprint of this report, contact:

Lilli Segre, Publications Officer
Institute for Telecommunication Sciences
(303) 497-3572
LSegre@ntia.gov

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