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Searching Sound

Posted by michael on from the when-grep-isn't-enough dept.

Technology Review has one of their few stories that's not registration-required describing searching audio files for any specified set of sounds. All sorts of interesting applications become possible if you can turn analog audio into a digitally-useful product without massive human intervention.

2 of 68 comments (clear)

  1. When you think about it... by Ieshan · · Score: 4, Interesting

    When you think about it, though, government and military agencies must have had this for quite some time.

    Tapping and bugging really does no good unless you've got someone listening all the time - and that's both expensive and impossible. While I realize that someone only has to be listening every time someone makes a phone call with the tapping situation, the outcome is lots more hours of audio then are feasible to search and use.

    If we couldn't have searched audio on a wide scale before, then I find it hard to believe we'd ever be catching anyone by specific phone intercepts. Instead, we'd just be using that sort of thing as evidence.

    I mean, I realize this is a great technology, I just doubt it's as "new" as it seems...

  2. Oops, here's a link by madmarcel · · Score: 4, Informative

    If you really want to find out how it works:

    Links to PS and PDF files are on this page

    http://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~nzdl/publications/

    (They are not going to like what I am about to do to their server ;)