Foenics - In depth

The field of forensic speech and audio analysis comprises a wide range of activities like speaker identification, speech enhancement or examination of the authenticity of audio recordings.

Unfortunately, the forensic expert often has to cope with heavily distorted audio recordings. In these cases a forensic analysis is often impossible or adequate analysis tools are not available until now.

For this reason Cube-Tec has developed the new restoration and analysis suite Foenics specialized for forensic purposes.
The Foenics Software was developed in close co-operation with the Bavarian State Criminal Office to produce a custom made solution for forensic audio and speech analysis experts. The combination of years of experience in the field of professional audio restoration and state-of-the-art technology has finally paid off to produce this expert range of forensic tools.

Foenics is based on the powerful Steinberg Wavelab sound editor and contains different Foenics Precision Instruments (FPI's) for almost all restoration and analysis cases. It is possible to freely cascade different FPI's leading to a perfect adaptation of every restoration or analysis problem.

The Foenics Software Package contains the complete range of modules needed by forensics experts to restore distorted audio signals used for speaker identification, speech enhancement and examination of the authenticity of recordings.

Two FPIs for the analysis of the frequency domain are:

• SonaView visualizes the spectrogram of the audio recording to be analyzed.
• SpectraView views the power spectral density of a signal in any desired frequency and amplitude range.

Furthermore, the Foenics Software contains several enhancement FPI's to improve the signal quality, intelligibility and audibility:

• Artefact-Removal frees the signal being processed from artefacts like crackles or non-linear distortions.
• Buzz-Removal eliminates hum and buzz distortions.
• FrequencyBand-Removal is a free scaleable, artefact-free high-slope filter.
• Frequency-Removal contains eight independent and completely adjustable notch filters.
• Noise-Removal is a free scaleable high performance denoiser.

For special enhancement problems, additional FPI's can be utilised:

• Burst-Removal is the first satisfying tool available for the removal of burst distortions like induced GSM-bursts.
• Clip-Removal recovers the loss of peak signals caused by digital clipping.

Cube-Tec International will continuously develop new FPI technologies to offer new optimized solutions for any forensic speech enhancement or analysis problem.