Low Delay Filter Banks with Perfect Reconstruction

The design of modulated filter banks with a low system delay and with perfect reconstruction will be shown. The filter lengths K can be chosen arbitrarily. The well known orthogonal filter banks have a system delay of K - 1 samples. The proposed filter banks can reduce this delay to N - 1 samples, where N is the number of bands. The design method uses a decomposition or factorization of the polyphase matrix into cascades of simple matrices. Several factorizations with different properties will be shown. A factorization will be introduced which is more general and needs fewer multiplications than previous approaches (K/2 + N). The resulting filter banks can have analysis and synthesis frequency responses that can be made different from each other, leading to biorthogonal filter banks. An optimization algorithm for the frequency response of the resulting filter banks will be given. Examples show the feasibility of designing even big filter banks with many bands with low system delay and high stopband attenuation

A Recurrent Encoder-Decoder Approach with Skip-filtering Connections for Monaural Singing Voice Separation

The objective of deep learning methods based on encoder-decoder architectures for music source separation is to approximate either ideal time-frequency masks or spectral representations of the target music source(s). The spectral representations are then used to derive time-frequency masks. In this work we introduce a method to directly learn time-frequency masks from an observed mixture magnitude spectrum. We employ recurrent neural networks and train them using prior knowledge only for the magnitude spectrum of the target source. To assess the performance of the proposed method, we focus on the task of singing voice separation. The results from an objective evaluation show that our proposed method provides comparable results to deep learning based methods which operate over complicated signal representations. Compared to previous methods that approximate time-frequency masks, our method has increased performance of signal to distortion ratio by an average of 3.8 dB

Monaural Singing Voice Separation with Skip-Filtering Connections and Recurrent Inference of Time-Frequency Mask

Singing voice separation based on deep learning relies on the usage of time-frequency masking. In many cases the masking process is not a learnable function or is not encapsulated into the deep learning optimization. Consequently, most of the existing methods rely on a post processing step using the generalized Wiener filtering. This work proposes a method that learns and optimizes (during training) a source-dependent mask and does not need the aforementioned post processing step. We introduce a recurrent inference algorithm, a sparse transformation step to improve the mask generation process, and a learned denoising filter. Obtained results show an increase of 0.49 dB for the signal to distortion ratio and 0.30 dB for the signal to interference ratio, compared to previous state-of-the-art approaches for monaural singing voice separation

Comparing Notes: Recording and Criticism

This chapter charts the ways in which recording has changed the nature of music criticism. It both provides an overview of the history of recording and music criticism, from the advent of Edison’s Phonograph to the present day, and examines the issues arising from this new technology and the consequent transformation of critical thought and practice

Wider Still and Wider: British Music Criticism since the Second World War

This chapter provides the first historical examination of music criticism in Britain since the Second World War. In the process, it also challenges the simplistic prevailing view of this being a period of decline from a golden age in music criticism

Filter banks and audio coding: compressing audio signals using Python

This textbook presents the fundamentals of audio coding, used to compress audio and music signals, using Python programs both as examples to illustrate the principles and for experiments for the reader. Together, these programs then form complete audio coders. The author starts with basic knowledge of digital signal processing (sampling, filtering) to give a thorough introduction to filter banks as used in audio coding, and their design methods. He then continues with the next core component, which are psycho-acoustic models. The author finally shows how to design and implement them. Lastly, the author goes on to describe components for more specialized coders, like the Integer-to-Integer MDCT filter bank, and predictive coding for lossless and low delay coding. Included are Python program examples for each section, which illustrate the principles and provide the tools for experiments. Comprehensively explains the fundamentals of filter banks and audio coding; Provides Python examples for each principle so that completed audio coders are obtained in the language; Includes a suite of classroom materials including exercises, experiments, and examples