Organization of Hierarchical Perceptual Sounds: Music Scene Analysis with Autonomous Processing Modules and a Quantitative Information Integration Mechanism

We propose a process model for hierarchical perceptual sound organization, which recognizes perceptual sounds included in incoming sound signals. We consider perceptual sound organization as a scene analysis problem in the auditory domain. Our model consists of multiple processing modules and a hypothesis network for quantitative integration of multiple sources of information. When input information for each processing module is available, the module rises to process it and asynchronously writes output information to the hypothesis network. On the hypothesis network, individual information is integrated and an optimal internal model of perceptual sounds is automatically constructed. Based on the model, a music scene analysis system has been developed for acoustic signals of ensemble music, which recognizes rhythm, chords, and source-separated musical notes. Experimental results show that our method has permitted autonomous, stable and e ective information integration to construct the internal model of hierarchical perceptual sounds.