Speech enhancement based on perceptually comfortable residual noise

Abstract

In this letter, we propose a novel approach to speech enhancement, which incorporates a new criterion based on residual noise shaping. In the proposed approach, our goal is to make the residual noise perceptually comfortable instead of making it less audible. A predetermined 'comfort noise' is provided as a target for the spectral shaping. Based on some assumptions, the resulting spectral gain function turns out to be a slight modification of the Wiener filter while requiring very low computational complexity. Subjective listening test shows that the proposed algorithm outperforms the conventional spectral enhancement technique based on soft decision and the noise suppression implemented in IS-893 Selectable Mode Vocoder. Copyright© 2007 The Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers.