Download Speech Dereverberation Using Recurrent Neural Networks
Advances in deep learning have led to novel, state-of-the-art techniques for blind source separation, particularly for the application of non-stationary noise removal from speech. In this paper, we show how a simple reformulation allows us to adapt blind source separation techniques to the problem of speech dereverberation and, accordingly, train a bidirectional recurrent neural network (BRNN) for this task. We compare the performance of the proposed neural network approach with that of a baseline dereverberation algorithm based on spectral subtraction. We find that our trained neural network quantitatively and qualitatively outperforms the baseline approach.
Download Synthesizer Sound Matching Using Audio Spectrogram Transformers
Systems for synthesizer sound matching, which automatically set the parameters of a synthesizer to emulate an input sound, have the potential to make the process of synthesizer programming faster and easier for novice and experienced musicians alike, whilst also affording new means of interaction with synthesizers. Considering the enormous variety of synthesizers in the marketplace, and the complexity of many of them, general-purpose sound matching systems that function with minimal knowledge or prior assumptions about the underlying synthesis architecture are particularly desirable. With this in mind, we introduce a synthesizer sound matching model based on the Audio Spectrogram Transformer. We demonstrate the viability of this model by training on a large synthetic dataset of randomly generated samples from the popular Massive synthesizer. We show that this model can reconstruct parameters of samples generated from a set of 16 parameters, highlighting its improved fidelity relative to multi-layer perceptron and convolutional neural network baselines. We also provide audio examples demonstrating the out-of-domain model performance in emulating vocal imitations, and sounds from other synthesizers and musical instruments.
Download Neural Parametric Equalizer Matching Using Differentiable Biquads
This paper proposes a neural network for carrying out parametric equalizer (EQ) matching. The novelty of this neural network solution is that it can be optimized directly in the frequency domain by means of differentiable biquads, rather than relying solely on a loss on parameter values which does not correlate directly with the system output. We compare the performance of the proposed neural network approach with that of a baseline algorithm based on a convex relaxation of the problem. It is observed that the neural network can provide better matching than the baseline approach because it directly attempts to solve the non-convex problem. Moreover, we show that the same network trained with only a parameter loss is insufficient for the task, despite the fact that it matches underlying EQ parameters better than one trained with a combination of spectral and parameter losses.
Download A Direct Microdynamics Adjusting Processor with Matching Paradigm and Differentiable Implementation
In this paper, we propose a new processor capable of directly changing the microdynamics of an audio signal primarily via a single dedicated user-facing parameter. The novelty of our processor is that it has built into it a measure of relative level, a short-term signal strength measurement which is robust to changes in signal macrodynamics. Consequent dynamic range processing is signal level-independent in its nature, and attempts to directly alter its observed relative level measurements. The inclusion of such a meter within our proposed processor also gives rise to a natural solution to the dynamics matching problem, where we attempt to transfer the microdynamic characteristics of one audio recording to another by means of estimating appropriate settings for the processor. We suggest a means of providing a reasonable initial guess for processor settings, followed by an efficient iterative algorithm to refine upon our estimates. Additionally, we implement the processor as a differentiable recurrent layer and show its effectiveness when wrapped around a gradient descent optimizer within a deep learning framework. Moreover, we illustrate that the proposed processor has more favorable gradient characteristics relative to a conventional dynamic range compressor. Throughout, we consider extensions of the processor, matching algorithm, and differentiable implementation for the multiband case.