Microspeakers used in mobile devices and PCs have band-limited frequency response, from constraining small drivers in tight enclosures, resulting in the loss of low-frequency playback content. The lack of low-frequencies in turn degrades the audio quality and perceived loudness. A method to overcome this physical limitation is to leverage the auditory phenomena of the missing fundamental; where by synthesizing the harmonic structure decodes the missing fundamental frequency. The proposed approaches employs side-chain processing for synthesizing the harmonics with only dominant portions of the low-frequency signal using critical-band filters. Additionally a parametric filter is used to shape the harmonics. Listening tests reveal that the proposed technique is preferred in terms of both the overall sound quality and the bass-only quality.

Authors: Bharitkar, Sunil G.; Mauer, Timothy; Oppenheimer, Charles; Wells, Teresa; Berfanger, David
Affiliations: HP Labs., Inc., San Francisco, CA, USA; HP, Inc., San Francisco, CA, USA(See document for exact affiliation information.)
AES Convention: 143 (October 2017) Paper Number: 9881
Publication Date: October 8, 2017 Import into BibTeX
Subject: Perception—Part 3
Permalink: https://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=19278

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