Patent ID: 7188065

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for recognizing a digital audio signal, the method comprising: obtaining a digital audio signal; deriving a categorization value representative of the digital audio signal so that perceptually similar digital audio signals have proximally similar categorization values, wherein the deriving of the categorization value comprises: transforming the digital audio signal into a digital-audio-signal transform; randomly dividing the digital-audio-signal transform into multiple chunks, each chunk containing signal data, wherein the dividing is carried out recursively to form hierarchical levels of overlapping chunks; averaging, for each of the chunks, the signal data to produce corresponding chunk averages; generating, based in part on the chunk averages, an exponential distribution having multiple distinct quantization levels; randomly rounding each of the chunk averages to one of the quantization levels to produce rounded values; hashing a composite of the rounded values; storing the categorization value in relationship with the digital audio signal.