# Multichannel Linear Prediction for Blind Reverberant Audio Source Separation

## TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel use of multichannel linear prediction as a pre-processing step to improve blind source separation in reverberant environments, simplifying the problem and enhancing separation performance.

## Contribution

It proposes a new application of MCLP as a pre-processing step, reducing reverberant separation to a non-reverberant problem, validated with real microphone array recordings.

## Key findings

- Pre-processing with MCLP improves source separation in reverberant conditions.
- Theoretical reduction of reverberant separation to non-reverberant case.
- Experimental validation with real recordings confirms effectiveness.

## Abstract

A class of methods based on multichannel linear prediction (MCLP) can achieve effective blind dereverberation of a source, when the source is observed with a microphone array. We propose an inventive use of MCLP as a pre-processing step for blind source separation with a microphone array. We show theoretically that, under certain assumptions, such pre-processing reduces the original blind reverberant source separation problem to a non-reverberant one, which in turn can be effectively tackled using existing methods. We demonstrate our claims using real recordings obtained with an eight-microphone circular array in reverberant environments.