Source counting in speech mixtures by nonparametric Bayesian estimation of an infinite Gaussian mixture model

In this paper we present a source counting algorithm to determine the number of speakers in a speech mixture. In our proposed method, we model the histogram of estimated directions of arrival with a non-parametric Bayesian infinite Gaussian mixture model. As an alternative to classical model selection criteria and to avoid specifying the maximum number of mixture components in advance, a Dirichlet process prior is employed over the mixture components. This allows to automatically determine the optimal number of mixture components that most probably model the observations. We demonstrate by experiments that this model outperforms a parametric approach using a finite Gaussian mixture model with a Dirichlet distribution prior over the mixture weights.