Audio dereverberation using binary masks

• Grant number: 20/16363-9
• Support type: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Effective date (Start): February 01, 2021
• Effective date (End): October 31, 2022
• Field of knowledge: Engineering - Electrical Engineering - Telecommunications
• Principal researcher: Bruno Sanches Masiero
• Grantee: Pedro Otávio de Oliveira
• Home Institution: Faculdade de Engenharia Elétrica e de Computação (FEEC). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 17/08120-6 - 3D-Audio. Sampling, encoding and reproduction of spatial audio, AP.JP

Abstract

The quantity and direction of sound sources in an acoustic scene can be done, at first, using spatial filters to estimate the sound level reaching an array of microphones from different directions, in a similar way to the estimation of acoustic images. This technique, however, usually has low resolution due to the relatively small number of microphones that make up the array. An alternative to increase the quality acoustic image, without increasing the number of sensors, is the use of sparsity-promoting regularization. However, if we apply these sparsity-promoting algorithms to a sound scene with only a few sources, but recorded in a very reverberant environment, the results will not be as encouraging, since for these algorithms reverberation will reduce the sparseness of the sound scene. To improve the separation of sound objects in these conditions, we propose the use of an information enhancement step, which discards information that is superfluous for our perception, in this case, the reverberation. The aim of this project is to develop a enhancement algorithm based on the concept of a binary mask to perform the reverberation of signals acquired with spherical microphone arrangements.It is expected that at the end of this project, the candidate will have developed a functional algorithm for the reverberation of the signals acquired with a spherical microphone arrangement. (AU)