Comparing Binaural Pre-processing Strategies I Instrumental Evaluation

• Published in: Trends in hearing Vol. 19
• Main Authors: Baumgärtel, Regina M., Krawczyk-Becker, Martin, Marquardt, Daniel, Völker, Christoph, Hu, Hongmei, Herzke, Tobias, Coleman, Graham, Adiloğlu, Kamil, Ernst, Stephan M. A., Gerkmann, Timo, Doclo, Simon, Kollmeier, Birger, Hohmann, Volker, Dietz, Mathias
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 30-12-2015
• Subjects: Acoustics - instrumentation; Algorithms; Auditory Perception - physiology; Auditory Threshold - physiology; Hearing Aids; Hearing Loss, Sensorineural - diagnosis; Hearing Loss, Sensorineural - therapy; Humans; Loudness Perception - physiology; Noise - prevention & control; Signal-To-Noise Ratio; Special Issue; Speech Intelligibility - physiology; audio quality; instrumental evaluation; signal enhancement; binaural; speech intelligibility
• ISSN: 2331-2165; 2331-2165
• DOI: 10.1177/2331216515617916

In a collaborative research project, several monaural and binaural noise reduction algorithms have been comprehensively evaluated. In this article, eight selected noise reduction algorithms were assessed using instrumental measures, with a focus on the instrumental evaluation of speech intelligibility. Four distinct, reverberant scenarios were created to reflect everyday listening situations: a stationary speech-shaped noise, a multitalker babble noise, a single interfering talker, and a realistic cafeteria noise. Three instrumental measures were employed to assess predicted speech intelligibility and predicted sound quality: the intelligibility-weighted signal-to-noise ratio, the short-time objective intelligibility measure, and the perceptual evaluation of speech quality. The results show substantial improvements in predicted speech intelligibility as well as sound quality for the proposed algorithms. The evaluated coherence-based noise reduction algorithm was able to provide improvements in predicted audio signal quality. For the tested single-channel noise reduction algorithm, improvements in intelligibility-weighted signal-to-noise ratio were observed in all but the nonstationary cafeteria ambient noise scenario. Binaural minimum variance distortionless response beamforming algorithms performed particularly well in all noise scenarios.