Hybrid quality measures for single-channel speech enhancement algorithms

We give an overview of speech quality measures and the most common noise reduction algorithms for the single-channel approach including a description of their respective shortcomings and apply the quality measures to the special deficiencies of speech enhancement algorithms. This is important for comparing different approaches to noise reduction, and it suggests ways to improve a speech enhancement algorithm. Objective quality measures are then compared to the subjective quality evaluation of human listeners by means of extensive listening tests using the so-called rank correlation. As a result, we propose a hybrid method for measuring the quality of speech enhancement algorithms.