Abstract: A method of capturing speech using a television system comprising a microphone device and a playback device. A playback device of the television system plays a tv audio signal to generate acoustic tv audio and a microphone of the television system captures a speech audio signal comprising a mixture of speech from a user and the acoustic tv audio. The method obtains a representation of the tv audio signal that lacks a well-defined synchronization with the tv audio signal and processes the speech audio signal using a semi-blind source separation process to separate the speech from the user from the acoustic tv audio.

Abstract: We describe a method of blind source separation for use, for example, in a listening or hearing aid. The method processes input data from multiple microphones each receiving a mixed signal from multiple audio sources, performing independent component analysis (ICA) on the data in the time-frequency domain based on an estimation of a spectrogram of each acoustic source. The spectrograms of the sources are determined from non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) models of each source, the NMF model representing time-frequency variations in the output of an acoustic source in the time-frequency domain. The NMF and ICA models are jointly optimized, thus automatically resolving an inter-frequency permutation ambiguity.