Room acoustic parameter extraction from music signals

A new method, employing machine learning techniques and a modified low frequency envelope spectrum estimator, for estimating important room acoustic parameters including Reverberation Time (RT) and Early Decay Time (EDT) from received music signals has been developed. It overcomes drawbacks found in applying music signals directly to the envelope spectrum detector developed for the estimation of RT from speech signals. The octave band music signal is first separated into sub bands corresponding to notes on the equal temperament scale and the level of each note normalised before applying an envelope spectrum detector. A typical artificial neural network is then trained to map these envelope spectra onto RT or EDT. Significant improvements in estimation accuracy were found and further investigations confirmed that the non-stationary nature of music envelopes is a major technical challenge hindering accurate parameter extraction from music and the proposed method to some extent circumvents the difficulty. © 2006 IEEE