PERCEPTUAL FILTERS FOR AUDIO SIGNAL ENHANCEMENT

A novel technique for the removal of broad-band noise from audio signa ls is presented. The technique relies on a psychoacoustic representati on of the signals, which allows the introduction of a linear time-freq uency-varying perceptual enhancement filter. It is shown that the perf ormance of this filter can be optimized using the frequency- and time- domain properties of the psychoacoustic model. It is also shown that i n terms of signal enhancement, the proposed perceptual filter is a ver y powerful tool, capable of both removing and psycho-acoustically shap ing all perceptually significant noise. The proposed filter is evaluat ed with a number of objective criteria, which assess its noise suppres sion capabilities together with possible degradations imposed on the p rocessed signal.