Clément Laroche, Senior Research Scientist at Jabra

Clément Laroche is a senior research scientist is the Audio Research group at Jabra. His goal is to improve the voice pickup quality by combining machine learning and traditional DSP algorithms. He graduated from Télécom Paris in 2017 with a PhD in computer science, signal processing and machine learning.

With the rapid evolution of artificial intelligence and deep learning algorithms, it’s essential to discern their transformative impacts on telecommunication devices’ audio performance, specifically headsets, speakerphones, and videobars. This presentation will start by delineating the challenges faced by conventional signal processing techniques in the current digital age, such as the inability to effectively filter ambient noises in varying environments or adapt to different speech characteristics.

We then explore how deep learning-based can aid in overcoming these challenges by learning complex, non-linear relationships from vast audio data. In addition to the technical aspect, we believe in the invaluable role of human listeners in validating our models. Hence, we will share results from a study, where a diverse crowd sourced the rating of audio quality. The insights gathered from these human ratings provided a more nuanced understanding of the perceived audio quality, underlining the importance of a human-centric approach in our technical advancements.