Discriminatively trained recurrent neural networks for single-channel speech separation

This paper describes an in-depth investigation of training criteria, network architectures and feature representations for regression-based single-channel speech separation with deep neural networks (DNNs). We use a generic discriminative training criterion corresponding to optimal source reconstruction from time-frequency masks, and introduce its application to speech separation in a reduced feature space (Mel domain). A comparative evaluation of time-frequency mask estimation by DNNs, recurrent DNNs and non-negative matrix factorization on the 2nd CHiME Speech Separation and Recognition Challenge shows consistent improvements by discriminative training, whereas long short-term memory recurrent DNNs obtain the overall best results. Furthermore, our results confirm the importance of fine-tuning the feature representation for DNN training.