The harmonic magnitude suppression (EMS) technique for intelligibility enhancement in the presence of interfering speech

Algorithms based on spectral subtraction are developed for improving the intelligibility of speech that has been interfered by a second talker´s voice. A number of new properties of spectral subtraction are shown, including the effects of phase on the output speech intelligibility, and the choice of magnitude spectral differences for best results. A harmonic extraction algorithm is also developed. Results of formal testing on the final system show that significant gain in intelligibility for low signal-to-noise ratio conditions is achieved.