Subband Blind Audio Source Separation Using a Time-Domain Algorithm and Tree-Structured QMF Filter Bank

T-ABCD is a time-domain method for blind linear separation of audio sources proposed by Koldovsky and Tichavsky (2008). The method produces short separating filters (5-40 taps) and works well with signals recorded at the sampling frequency of 8-16 kHz. In this paper, we propose a novel subband-based variant of T-ABCD, in which the input signals are decomposed into subbands using a tree-structured QMF filter bank. T-ABCD is then applied to each subband in parallel, and the separated subbands are re-ordered and synthesized to yield the final separated signals. The analysis filter of the filter bank is carefully designed to enable maximal decimation of signals without aliasing. Short filters applied within subbands then result in sufficiently long filters in fullband. Using a reasonable number of subbands, the method yields improved speed, stability and performance at an arbitrary sampling frequency.