Exploiting simultaneously masked linear prediction in a WI speech coder

Abstract

This paper uses a method of incorporating simultaneous masking into the calculation of a linear predictive filter (SMLPC) as the front end to a 2 kbps waveform interpolation (WI) speech coder. A modification to the masking threshold calculation used in SMLPC is proposed. This modification improves the performance of SMLPC in noise like sections by placing greater emphasis on strongly voiced speech. MOS test results reveal that the modified SMLPC improved the perceptual quality of the WI coder. The improvement is significant for female speakers whilst the quality for male speech is virtually unchanged. This result conflicts with previous results reported for SMLPC where only male speech was improved. The change is attributed to the modification of the masking threshold and confirms that adapting the masking threshold according to the pitch of the speech will allow SMLPC to remove more perceptually important information from all input speech than standard LPC.