Abstract
A software application has been designed that runs a stereophonic acoustic echo canceler natively under Windows operating systems on personal computers: the WinEC. This is a major achievement since echo cancelers require that the sound card’s input and output signals are time-synchronous. Synchronizing the audio streams is a great challenge in such an “asynchronous” environment as the operating system of a PC. Furthermore, stereophonic echo cancellation is significantly more complicated to handle than the monophonic case because of computational complexity, nonuniqueness of solution, and convergence problems. In this chapter we present the system design and the core algorithms we use. This system has been evaluated in point-to-point as well as multi-point communication scenarios. We regularly use the software for teleconferencing in wideband stereo audio over commercial IP networks.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
B. H. Nitsch, “Real-time implementation of the exact block NLMS algorithm for acoustic echo control in hands-free telephone systems,” in Acoustic Signal Processing for Telecommunication, S. L. Gay and J. Benesty, Eds., chapter 4, pp. 68–80. Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000.
V. Fischer, T. Gänsler, E. J. Diethorn, and J. Benesty, “A software stereo scoustic echo canceler for Microsoft Windows,” in Proc. IWAENC, 2001.
T. Gänsler, J. Benesty, E. J. Diethorn, and V. Fischer, “Algorithm design of a stereophonic acoustic echo canceler system,” in Proc. IEEE ASSP Workshop Appls. Signal Processing Audio Acoustics, pp. 179–182, 2001.
T. Gänsler and J. Benesty, “Multichannel acoustic echo cancellation: what’s new?,” in Proc. IWAENC, 2001.
J. Benesty, T. Gänsler, D. R. Morgan, M. M. Sondhi, and S. L. Gay, Advances in Network and Acoustic Echo cancellation, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 2001.
J. Benesty, D. R. Morgan, J. L. Hall, and M. M. Sondhi, “Synthesized stereo combined with acoustic echo cancellation for desktop conferencing,” Bell Labs Tech. J., vol. 3, pp. 148–158, July-Sept. 1998.
J. Chen, “3D audio and virtual acoustical environment synthesis,” in Acoustic Signal Processing for Telecommunication, S. L. Gay and J. Benesty, Eds., chapter 13, pp. 283–301. Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000.
Microsoft Corporation, “Microsoft developer network 6.0,” www.msdn.com, 2000.
S. A. Ramprashad, “A multimode transform predictive coder (MTPC) for speech and audio,” in IEEE Speech Coding Workshop, 1999.
P. Eneroth, S. L. Gay, T. Gänsler, and J. Benesty, “A real-time stereophonic acoustic subband echo canceler,” in Acoustic Signal Processing for Telecommunications, S. L. Gay and J. Benesty, Eds., chapter 8, pp. 135–152. Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000.
P. Eneroth, J. Benesty, T. Gänsler, and S. L. Gay, “Comparison of different adaptive algorithms for stereophonic acoustic echo cancellation,” in Proc. EUSIPCO, 2000, pp. 1835–1837.
J. Benesty, D. R. Morgan, and M. M. Sondhi, “A better understanding and an improved solution to the specific problems of stereophonic acoustic echo cancellation,” IEEE Trans. Speech Audio Processing, vol. 6, pp. 156–165, Mar. 1998.
P. J. Huber, Robust Statistics, Wiley, New York, 1981.
J. Benesty and D. R. Morgan, “Multi-channel frequency-domain adaptive filtering,” in Acoustic Signal Processing for Telecommunication, S. L. Gay and J. Benesty, Eds., chapter 7, pp. 121–133. Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000.
T. Gänsler and J. Benesty, “A frequency-domain double-talk detector based on a normalized cross-correlation vector,” Signal Processing, vol. 81, pp. 1783–1787, Aug. 2001.
K. Ochiai, T. Araseki, and T. Ogihara, “Echo canceler with two echo path models,” IEEE Trans. Commun., vol. 25, pp. 589–595, June 1977.
A. Mader, H. Puder, and G. U. Schmidt, “Step-size control for acoustic echo cancellation filters-an overview,” Signal Processing, vol. 80, pp. 1697–1719, Sept. 2000.
E. J. Diethorn, “Subband noise reduction methods for speech enhancement,” in Acoustic Signal Processing for Telecommunication, S. L. Gay and J. Benesty, Eds., chapter 9, pp. 156–178. Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000.
E. Zwicker and H. Fastl, Psycho-acoustics, Facts and Models, Information Sciences. Springer, 2nd edition, 1999.
H. Fletcher, Speech and Hearing in Communication, The Acoustical Society of America, 1995.
S. Haykin, Adaptive Filter Theory, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1996.
T. Gänsler, J. Benesty, and S. L. Gay, “Double-talk detection schemes for acoustic echo cancellation,” in Acoustic Signal Processing for Telecommunication, S. L. Gay and J. Benesty, Eds., chapter 5, pp. 81–97. Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000.
D. A. Berkley and J. L. Flanagan, “HuMaNet: an experimental human-machine communications network based on ISDN wideband audio,” AT&T Tech. J., vol. 69, pp. 87–99, Sept./Oct. 1990.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Gänsler, T., Fischer, V., Diethorn, E.J., Benesty, J. (2004). The WinEC: A Real-Time Hands-Free Stereo Communication System. In: Huang, Y., Benesty, J. (eds) Audio Signal Processing for Next-Generation Multimedia Communication Systems. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-7769-6_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-7769-6_7
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-1-4020-7768-5
Online ISBN: 978-1-4020-7769-2
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive