A HEARING aid that can pick out a single voice from many different
conversations—as easily as tuning a radio—could result from a new
signal-processing technique.
Although people can easily pick out individual voices in a crowded room,
repeating the feat artificially is tricky. The traditional method, called
Independent Component Analysis, works by assuming that different sources
generate signals that change independently. For example, if two people speak at
the same time, one voice does not depend on the other.
ICA is powerful but statistically complex, so computers using it take a long
time to reach a conclusion, says…
