Symmetry/Asymmetry in Speech and Audio Processing: Topics, Challenges and Advances

Dear Colleagues,

Audio and speech processing has a broad range of potential applications in our daily life, and it has already been widely used in different types of systems, such as audio entertainment, human–machine speech interaction, privacy and security, audio-visual conference, and hearing-assistive systems. Over the last half-century, both statistical signal processing (SSP)-based and machine learning (ML)-based technologies have made great progress, accelerating the research and application of audio and speech processing in a large number of devices. Generally, the signal processing method should match the configurations of the sound recording/reproduction devices, auditory perception, and their potential applications. For audio and speech processing, symmetrical and asymmetrical problems can arise due to the placement of microphones and/or speakers. In human hearing, it is also not always symmetric, as some people’s ears are symmetric while others are asymmetric. Numerous studies have focused on solving the symmetrical and asymmetrical problems for practical applications.

This Special Issue invites original research that investigates the symmetry/asymmetry in audio and speech processing as well as auditory perception. We welcome work that studies the mechanisms, methodologies, and treatments of the symmetrical and asymmetrical problems in the field of audio and speech processing.

Potential topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Symmetric/asymmetric microphone array and microphone array network for speech and audio signal processing;
• Symmetric/asymmetric windows and filter-bank design for speech and audio processing;
• 3D audio reproduction with symmetric/asymmetric speaker array;
• Symmetric/asymmetric hearing impairments and hearing-assistive devices;
• Symmetric/asymmetric binaural hearing and signal processing;
• Symmetric/asymmetric beamforming patterns for audio and speech signals;
• Symmetric/asymmetric tinnitus and treatments.

Prof. Dr. Chengshi Zheng
Prof. Dr. Xiaodong Li
Prof. Dr. Jinqiu Sang
Guest Editors

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