Research

Speech enhancement for vulnerable listeners

Speech enhancement is an area that has been actively studied for many decades. Although various speech enhancement algorithms have been invented, only a little attention has been paid to the ability of the listeners of the enhanced speech; namely most state of the art techniques target at listeners with normal hearing who are the native speaker of the language spoken. This project focuses on developing novel speech enhancement algorithms for vulnerable listeners who are disadvantaged by their hearing ability and/or the proficiency of the language spoken.

Publications/conference presentations relevant to this research

Journal publications

  • Y.C. Zhang, Y. Hioka, C.T.J. Hui, and C.I. Watson. Performance of single-channel speech enhancement algorithms on Mandarin listeners with different immersion conditions in New Zealand English. Speech Communication, In Press (Publisher’s link)

Conference proceedings

  • Y.C. Zhang, C.I. Watson, C.T.J. Hui, and Y. Hioka. Effect of speech enhancement at phonetic level perception of English speech between native English and Mandarin listeners. In 20th International Congress of the Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS 2023), Aug 2023
  • Y.C. Zhang, Y. Hioka, C.T.J Hui, and C. Watson. Performance of speech enhancement algorithms on the speech intelligibility of native Mandarin listeners immersed in English-speaking environment. Internoise 2023.
  • Y.C. Zhang, C.T.J Hui, Y. Hioka, and C.I. Watson. Performance of speech enhancement algorithms for native Mandarin listeners on English perception. In International Acoustics Congress (ICA) 2022, Oct 2022. (Presentation video)
  • Y. Hioka, K. Kobayashi, and K. Niwa. Improving speech intelligibility using microphones on behind the ear hearing aids. In IEEE 21st International Workshop on multimedia Signal Processing (MMSP), September 2019.