8 research outputs found
Design of a transport coding scheme for high-quality video over ATM networks
Caption title.Includes bibliographical references (p. 38-39).Supported by ARPA. F30602-92-C-0030 Supported by the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. DAAH04-95-1-0103V. Parthasarathy, J.W. Modestino and K.S. Vastola
Perceptual models in speech quality assessment and coding
The ever-increasing demand for good communications/toll
quality speech has created a renewed interest into the
perceptual impact of rate compression. Two general areas are
investigated in this work, namely speech quality assessment
and speech coding.
In the field of speech quality assessment, a model is
developed which simulates the processing stages of the
peripheral auditory system. At the output of the model a
"running" auditory spectrum is obtained. This represents
the auditory (spectral) equivalent of any acoustic sound such
as speech. Auditory spectra from coded speech segments serve
as inputs to a second model. This model simulates the
information centre in the brain which performs the speech
quality assessment. [Continues.
Algorithms and architectures for the multirate additive synthesis of musical tones
In classical Additive Synthesis (AS), the output signal is the sum of a large number of independently controllable sinusoidal partials. The advantages of AS for music synthesis are well known as is the high computational cost. This thesis is concerned with the computational optimisation of AS by multirate DSP techniques. In note-based music synthesis, the expected bounds of the frequency trajectory of each partial in a finite lifecycle tone determine critical time-invariant partial-specific sample rates which are lower than the conventional rate (in excess of 40kHz) resulting in computational savings. Scheduling and interpolation (to suppress quantisation noise) for many sample rates is required, leading to the concept of Multirate Additive Synthesis (MAS) where these overheads are minimised by synthesis filterbanks which quantise the set of available sample rates. Alternative AS optimisations are also appraised. It is shown that a hierarchical interpretation of the QMF filterbank preserves AS generality and permits efficient context-specific adaptation of computation to required note dynamics. Practical QMF implementation and the modifications necessary for MAS are discussed. QMF transition widths can be logically excluded from the MAS paradigm, at a cost. Therefore a novel filterbank is evaluated where transition widths are physically excluded. Benchmarking of a hypothetical orchestral synthesis application provides a tentative quantitative analysis of the performance improvement of MAS over AS. The mapping of MAS into VLSI is opened by a review of sine computation techniques. Then the functional specification and high-level design of a conceptual MAS Coprocessor (MASC) is developed which functions with high autonomy in a loosely-coupled master- slave configuration with a Host CPU which executes filterbanks in software. Standard hardware optimisation techniques are used, such as pipelining, based upon the principle of an application-specific memory hierarchy which maximises MASC throughput