Patent ID: 7324939

Claim:
A method for finding a desired audio event in an audio signal comprising: accepting audio data representing a recording of the audio signal in a recording interval having a beginning and an end, wherein a first end time comprises a time of one of the beginning and the end of the recording interval and a second end time comprises a time of the other of the beginning and the end; preprocessing the audio data, including computing preprocessing data associated with each of a series of times in the recording interval, including computing preprocessing data that include scores associated with each of the times based on the audio signal between said each of the series of times and the first end time of the recording interval, and storing said preprocessing data; determining a representation of the desired audio event; and searching the audio signal for the desired audio event, including computing scores for each of the series of times in the recording interval based on the representation of the desired audio event and associated with the audio signal between said each of the series of times and the second end time of the recording interval, retrieving the stored preprocessing data, and combining the scores based on the representation of the desired audio event and scores from the retrieved preprocessing data to form scores for the desired audio event each associated with a different time in the recording interval.