Acoustic fingerprint

An acoustic fingerprint is a digital code for the characterization of a sound or an audio recording, taking into account special acoustic conditions.

Calculating an acoustic fingerprint is a similar challenge as the audio data compression, the WAV -to- MIDI conversion or, in particular, the voice recognition: Since it is a complex mixture of frequencies and phase positions in natural sounds, the detection and extraction of the specific shares of the acoustic signal - the useful information - an essential prerequisite. Acoustic Fingerprints can be very simple (such as a hash value) or in the form of metadata, which allow, for example, statements about the genre of a digitally stored music piece.

Acoustic fingerprints can be stored in databases, where they are used for identification (as with the voice recognition or the recognition of individual pieces of music ) and classification of new, unknown signals and their imprints. The music identification service Shazam is based on the comparison of acoustic fingerprints and is designed specifically for mobile phones and smartphones.

Commercial methods of fingerprint generation for music data and Others TRM and AudioID. As a free alternative, there are AcoustID.