Binaural source separation based on spatial cues and maximum likelihood model adaptation

This paper describes a system for separating multiple moving sound sources from two-channel recordings based on spatial cues and a model adaptation technique. We employ a statistical model of observed interaural level and phase differences, where maximum likelihood estimation of model parameters is achieved through an expectation-maximization algorithm. This model is used to partition spectrogram points into several clusters (one cluster per source) and generate spectrogram masks accordingly for isolating individual sound sources. We follow a maximum likelihood linear regression (MLLR) approach for tracking source relocations and adapting model parameters accordingly. The proposed algorithm is able to separate more sources than input channels, i.e. in the underdetermined setting. In simulated anechoic and reverberant environments with two and three speakers, the proposed model-adaptation algorithm yields more than 10 dB gain in signal-to-noise-ratio-improvement for azimuthal source relocations of 15 degrees or more. Moreover, this performance gain is achievable with only 0.6 seconds of input mixture received after relocation. (C) 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.