DM: Dual-path Magnitude Network for General Speech Restoration

Abstract: In this paper, we introduce a novel general speech restoration model: the Dual-path Magnitude (DM) network, designed to address multiple distortions including noise, reverberation, and bandwidth degradation effectively. The DM network employs dual parallel magnitude decoders that share parameters: one uses a masking-based algorithm for distortion removal and the other employs a mapping-based approach for speech restoration. A novel aspect of the DM network is the integration of the magnitude spectrogram output from the masking decoder into the mapping decoder through a skip connection, enhancing the overall restoration capability. This integrated approach overcomes the inherent limitations observed in previous models, as detailed in a step-by-step analysis. The experimental results demonstrate that the DM network outperforms other baseline models in the comprehensive aspect of general speech restoration, achieving substantial restoration with fewer parameters.