Real-time Psychoacoustic Frequency Masking Compensation for Audio Signals with Overlapping Spectra

This work presents a prototype for the automatic and real- time psychoacoustic frequency masking effect compensa- tion. This tool is intended to handle audio signals with overlapping spectra coming from two different mono or stereo sources in order to emphasise those frequencies of a main source that the second one masks. The goal is achieved using a dynamic equaliser controlled by a func- tion of the differences of the input spectra psychoacoustic models. The tool has been prototyped as a standard Virtual Studio Technology (VST3) plugin and its effectiveness has been tested with a user study carried out in the context of music production.