Introduction to the special issue on computational auditory scene analysis

The potential importance of auditory scene analysis to fields such as robust speech processing, virtual auditory environments and polyphonic music transcription has been recognized, resulting in the development of computational auditory scene analysis (CASA), a collection of algorithms and models influenced by perceptual organization in listeners. The first collection of journal articles to this emergent field are provided in this special issue of Speech Communication on CASA. The papers contained in this special issue are extended and revised versions of some of the presentations given at the 2nd Workshop on Computational Auditory Scene Analysis at the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Nagoya, Japan 1997.