Hanekom J J
Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering University of Pretoria.
S Afr J Commun Disord. 1995;42:67-72.
The masking property of the auditory system is well known in the context of two-tone masking. For complex (speech) signals, the effects of masking are less well known. This paper explores the masking of speech signals, by calculating which parts of the speech signal is inaudible because of masking. The theory for the masking of one tone by another is expanded, to establish an equation for the masking threshold. This masking threshold takes into account the masking of each frequency component on all other frequency components. Speech is then synthesized in which the supposedly inaudible parts of the speech signal are discarded, and the effects are evaluated in a very simple psychoacoustic experiment. It is shown that the information below the masking threshold is indeed redundant.
在双音掩蔽的背景下，听觉系统的掩蔽特性是众所周知的。对于复杂（语音）信号，掩蔽效应则不太为人所知。本文通过计算语音信号中哪些部分由于掩蔽而听不见，来探索语音信号的掩蔽情况。将一个音调被另一个音调掩蔽的理论进行扩展，以建立掩蔽阈值的方程。该掩蔽阈值考虑了每个频率成分对所有其他频率成分的掩蔽。然后合成语音，其中丢弃语音信号中假定听不见的部分，并在一个非常简单的心理声学实验中评估其效果。结果表明，低于掩蔽阈值的信息确实是冗余的。
