Subject: Re: CASA problems and solutions From: John Culling <jfc(at)BRENTWOOD.PSYC.CF.AC.UK> Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2001 11:12:39 GMTJohn, While I wouldn't want to prejudge the usefulness of your approach as a method for scene analysis by machines (I've heard some impressive reverberation-suppression demos of Birger Kollmeier's), it seems evident that humans do not use the cues in the way you describe. Firstly, although human sound localisation works quite well in reverberant environments, humans have great difficulty using differences in source location to separate speech in reverberation (Plomp, 1976; Culling et al., 1994; Darwin and Hukin, 2000). Second, there is some reason to doubt that sound localisation is a pre-cursor to sound separation (Culling and Summerfield, 1995; Hukin and Darwin, 1995). Darwin and Hukin (1999) have suggested that separation occurs first, and that the processes of sound localisation are then applied to already-separated auditory objects. John. Plomp, R (1976). Acustica, 34, 200-211. Culling, JF, Summerfield, Q, and Marshall, DH (1994). Speech Comm. 14, 71-95. Darwin, CJ and Hukin RW (2000) JASA, 108, 335-342. Culling, JF and Summerfield, Q (1995) JASA 98, 785-797. Hukin, RW, and Darwin, CJ (1995) JASA 98, 1380-1387. Darwin, CJ and Hukin, RW (1999) JEP:HPP 25, 617-629.