Effects of Single-Channel Speech Enhancement Algorithms on Mandarin Speech Intelligibility

摘要

Recent studies have shown that the state-of-the-art single channel speech enhancement algorithms cannot improve, usually decrease, the English speech intelligibility in most listening conditions. This study investigates the effects of single-channel speech enhancement algorithms on Mandarin speech intelligibility. Noisy speech signals were first processed by five different single-channel speech enhancement algorithms in various noise conditions and then presented to ten normal hearing listeners for syllables identification. Recognition results of Mandarin syllables provided by listeners show that the tested speech enhancement algorithms cannot improve the Mandarin speech intelligibility in the tested listening conditions, and even great deteriorations in speech recognition. The recognition errors were further analyzed in term of "tone error" and "phoneme error" to find out the potential factors that lead to the recognition deterioration. The analysis results demonstrated that (i) the tone is a relatively robust cue for speech enhancement; (ii) the main errors come from the mistakes of the syllable and consonant confusions.