Intelligibility investigation of single-channel noise reduction algorithms for Chinese and Japanese

A large number of single-channel noise reduction algorithms have been proposed based largely on mathematical principles and evaluated with English speech. Given the different perceptual cues used by native listeners of different languages, it is of great interest to examine whether there are any language effects on speech intelligibility when the same noise reduction algorithm is used to process noisy speech in different languages. In this paper, a comparative evaluation is taken of various single-channel noise reduction algorithms applied to noisy speech for Chinese and Japanese. Clean speech signals (Chinese words and Japanese words) were first corrupted by three types of noise at two signal-to-noise ratios and then processed by five single-channel noise reduction algorithms. The processed signals were finally presented to normal-hearing listeners for recognition. Intelligibility evaluations showed that the majority of noise-reduction algorithms did not improve speech intelligibility and that significant differences in performance of noise reduction algorithms were observed across the two languages.