The Sensitivity Matrix: Using Advanced Auditory Models in Speech and Audio Processing

Perceptually optimal processing of speech and audio signals demands a rigorous approach using a distortion measure that resembles human perception. This requires distortion measures based on sophisticated, complex auditory models. Under the assumption of small distortions these models can be simplified by means of a sensitivity matrix. In this paper, we show the power of this approach. We present a method to derive the sensitivity matrix for distortion measures based on spectro-temporal auditory models. This method is applied to an example auditory model and the region of validity of the approximation and the application of linear algebra to analyze the characteristics of the given model are discussed. Furthermore, we show how to build a coder minimizing a sensitivity matrix distortion measure given the typically long support of a perceptual distortion measure