A multi-objective approach for improving real-time audio peak reduction and speech clarity in a dental drill noise reduction device

Abstract

Audio signals typically comprise several characteristics to be improved by signal processing and in practice, each of these characteristics has a unique relationship to the controllable system parameters. Quantifying these relationships in a multi-objective (MO) approach will enable an improved system setup. This paper determines two novel objective functions of a complex audio signal for the real-time simultaneous improvement of audio peak reduction and speech clarity in a dental drill noise reduction (DDNR) device. The influence of the DDNR system parameters on the outcome of peak reduction and speech clarity is determined by combining response surface methodology and a desirability function to enable MO optimisation. The results show an average improvement of nearly 30% over the original DDNR device performance. The approach described provides an effective means for addressing MO optimisation of other real-time audio signal processing applications where the signal has similar peak reduction and speech clarity objectives to be processed, particularly where the physical outcome is not easy to evaluate in a virtual environment.