Mr Harnick Khera

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Project title: Informed source separation for multi-mic production

(In collaboration with BBC)

Abstract: In professional multi-microphone recording scenarios, there is often cross-talk between sound sources and undesirable influence of room acoustics. This can cause quality issues in mixing. The combination of multiple correlated microphone signals leads to timbral colouration. It is desirable to reduce such interference, separating the mixtures of sound sources, to enable more precise control of the mix balance in a way that increases sound quality.

While source separation has been around for many years, the techniques can often introduce undesirable artefacts, which reduce quality. Blind source separation describes the scenario where there is little a priori information about the mixture of source. In a multi-microphone production scenario, such as in a music or broadcast recording studio, there is often information available to inform the source separation process. One approach could be to utilise information from multiple correlated microphone sources. For music recordings, often there is also a priori information from the score or previous multitrack recordings of the pieces and instruments. Similarly for speech signals, such as a panel show or drama recording, the voices of performers are generally known in advance.

Research