T-ABCD: A Time-domain Method for Blind Audio Source Separation Based on a Complete ICA Decomposition
of an Observation Space

Abstract: Here, we provide a Matlab GUI (in p-code) for the T-ABCD method for blind separation of convolutive mixture of audio sources. The algorithm works in time-domain and is based on a complete unconstrained decomposition of the observation space spanned by input signals. The observation space may be defined in a general way, which allows application of long separating filters, although its dimension is low. In this respect, the variant provided here utilizes Laguerre separating filters. The decomposition is done by an appropriate independent component analysis (ICA) algorithm giving independent components that are grouped into clusters corresponding to the original sources. Components of the clusters are combined by a reconstruction procedure after estimating microphone responses (images) of the original sources.

Matlab GUI package in p-code (July 20, 2011): here (P-code generated in Matlab 7.9.0.529 (R2009b).) Now, a command-line code of T-ABCD for more flexible usage (e.g., testing/comparison purposes) is included. Please do not hesitate to contact us in case of any troubles with the codes.

Corresponding papers:

A detailed description in IEEE TASLP

[1] Z. Koldovský and P. Tichavský, "Time-Domain Blind Separation of Audio Sources on the basis of a Complete ICA Decomposition of an Observation Space", accepted for publication in IEEE Trans. on Speech, Audio and Language Processing, April 2010.

Pioneering papers

[2] Z. Koldovský and P. Tichavský, "Time-domain Blind Audio Source Separation Using Advanced Component Clustering and Reconstruction", to be presented on The Joint Workshop on Hands-free Speech Communication and Microphone Arrays (HSCMA 2008), May 6-8, Trento, Italy, 2008. (here)

[3] Z. Koldovský and P. Tichavský, "Time-Domain Blind Audio Source Separation Using Advanced ICA Methods", Proceedings of 8th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (Interspeech 2007), pp. 846-849, August 2007. (here)

Particular improvements and extensions

[4] J. Málek, Z. Koldovský, J. Ždánský and J. Nouza, "Enhancement of Noisy Speech Recordings via Blind Source Separation", Proceedings of the 9th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (Interspeech 2008), pp. 159-162, ISSN: 1990-9772, September 22-26, Brisbane, Australia, 2008.(here)

[5] Z. Koldovský, P. Tichavský, and J. Málek, "Time-Domain Blind Audio Source Separation Method Producing Separating Filters of Generalized Feedforward Structure," in Latent Variable Analysis and Signal Separation, Lecture Notes in Computer Science Vol. 6365, pp. 17-24, ISBN: 978-3-642-15994-7, Springer, Heidelberg, Sept. 2010.

[6] Z. Koldovský, P. Tichavský, and J. Málek, "Subband Blind Audio Source Separation Using a Time-Domain Algorithm and Tree-Structured QMF Filter Bank," in Latent Variable Analysis and Signal Separation, Lecture Notes in Computer Science Vol. 6365, pp. 25-32, ISBN: 978-3-642-15994-7, Springer, Heidelberg, Sept. 2010.

[7] J. Málek, Z. Koldovský, and P. Tichavský, "Adaptive Time-Domain Blind Separation of Speech Signals," in Latent Variable Analysis and Signal Separation, Lecture Notes in Computer Science Vol. 6365, pp. 9-16, ISBN: 978-3-642-15994-7, Springer, Heidelberg, Sept. 2010.

[8] Z. Koldovský, J. Málek, and P. Tichavský, "Blind Speech Separation in Time-Domain Using Block-Toeplitz Structure of Reconstructed Signal Matrices," Interspeech 2011, Florence, Italy, Aug. 2011.

A complete SiSEC 2010 dataset for testing and benchmarks (task "Robust blind linear/non-linear separation of short two-sources-two-microphones recordings"): here

Instalation and execution of the T-ABCD package: Unzip the package into a directory, run Matlab, load microphone recordings into rows of a matrix x, and type (in Matlab)

>> tddeconv(x)

See the readme.txt file.

Example:

Another example: