Patent ID: 7174293

Claim:
Apparatus for recognizing free-field audio signals, comprising: a hand-held device having a microphone to capture free-field audio signals, the captured free field audio signals corresponding to a portion of a recorded audio work that is less than an entire recorded audio work; a local processor, coupleable to said hand-held device, to transmit audio signal features corresponding to the captured free-field audio signals to a recognition site; one of said hand-held device and said local processor including circuitry which extracts a time series of spectrally distinct audio signal features from any portion of the captured free-field audio signals, the time series of spectrally distinct audio signal features corresponding to the portion of a recorded audio work that is less than the entire recorded audio work; and a recognition processor and a recognition memory at the recognition site, said recognition memory storing data corresponding to a plurality of audio templates, said recognition processor correlating the audio signal features transmitted from said local processor with at least one of the audio templates stored in said recognition processor memory, said recognition processor providing a recognition signal based on the correlation.