US Patent 9679564 Human transcriptionist directed posterior audio source separation

A graphical user interface is described for human guided audio source separation in a multi-speaker automated transcription system receiving audio signals representing speakers participating together in a speech session. A speaker avatar for each speaker is distributed about a user interface display to suggest speaker positions relative to each other during the speech session. There also is a speaker highlight element on the interface display for visually highlighting a specific speaker avatar corresponding to an active speaker in the speech session to aid a human transcriptionist listening to the speech session to identify the active speaker. A speech signal processor performs signal processing of the audio signals to isolate an audio signal corresponding to the highlighted speaker avatar. A session transcription processor performs automatic speech recognition (ASR) of the signal processed audio signal for the speech session as supervised by the human transcriptionist and reflecting position of the speaker highlight element.