cepstralFeatureExtractor

Extract cepstral features from audio segment

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Description

The cepstralFeatureExtractor System object™ extracts cepstral features from an audio segment. Cepstral features are commonly used to characterize speech and music signals.

To extract cepstral features:

  1. Create the cepstralFeatureExtractor object and set its properties.

  2. Call the object with arguments, as if it were a function.

To learn more about how System objects work, see What Are System Objects?.

Creation

Syntax

cepFeatures = cepstralFeatureExtractor
cepFeatures = cepstralFeatureExtractor(Name,Value)

Description

example

cepFeatures = cepstralFeatureExtractor creates a System object, cepFeatures, that calculates cepstral features independently across each input channel. Columns of the input are treated as individual channels.

example

cepFeatures = cepstralFeatureExtractor(Name,Value) sets each property Name to the specified Value. Unspecified properties have default values.

Example: cepFeatures = cepstralFeatureExtractor('InputDomain','Frequency','SampleRate',fs,'LogEnergy','Replace') accepts a signal in the frequency domain, sampled at fs Hz. The first element of the coefficients vector is replaced by the log energy value.

Properties

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Unless otherwise indicated, properties are nontunable, which means you cannot change their values after calling the object. Objects lock when you call them, and the release function unlocks them.

If a property is tunable, you can change its value at any time.

For more information on changing property values, see System Design in MATLAB Using System Objects.

Type of filter bank, specified as either 'Mel' or 'Gammatone'. When FilterBank is set to Mel, the object computes the mel frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCC). When FilterBank is set to Gammatone, the object computes the gammatone cepstral coefficients (GTCC).

Data Types: char | string

Domain of the input signal, specified as either 'Time' or 'Frequency'.

Data Types: char | string

Number of coefficients to return, specified as an integer in the range [2, v], where v is the number of valid passbands. The number of valid passbands depends on the type of filter bank:

  • Mel –– The number of valid passbands is defined as sum(BandEdges <= floor(SampleRate/2))-2.

  • Gammatone –– The number of valid passbands is defined as ceil(hz2erb(FrequencyRange(2))-hz2erb(FrequencyRange(1))).

Data Types: single | double

Nonlinear rectification type, specified as 'Log' or 'Cubic-Root'.

Data Types: char | string

FFT length, specified as a positive integer. The default, [], means that the FFT length is equal to the number of rows in the input signal.

Dependencies

To enable this property, set InputDomain to 'Time'.

Data Types: single | double | int8 | int16 | int32 | int64 | uint8 | uint16 | uint32 | uint64

Specify how the log energy is shown in the coefficients vector output, specified as:

  • 'Append' –– The object prepends the log energy to the coefficients vector. The length of the coefficients vector is 1 + NumCoeffs.

  • 'Replace' –– The object replaces the first coefficient with the log energy of the signal. The length of the coefficients vector is NumCoeffs.

  • 'Ignore' –– The object does not calculate or return the log energy.

Data Types: char | string

Input sample rate in Hz, specified as a real positive scalar.

Data Types: single | double

Advanced properties

Band edges of the filter bank in Hz, specified as a nonnegative monotonically increasing row vector in the range [0, ∞). The maximum bandedge frequency can be any finite number. The number of bandedges must be in the range [4, 80].

The default band edges are spaced linearly for the first ten and then logarithmically after. The default band edges are set as recommended by [1].

Dependencies

To enable this property, set FilterBank to Mel.

Data Types: single | double

Frequency range of the filter bank in Hz, specified as a positive, monotonically increasing two-element row vector. The maximum frequency can be any finite number. The center frequencies of the filter bank are equally spaced between hz2erb(FrequencyRange(1)) and hz2erb(FrequencyRange(2)) on the ERB scale.

Dependencies

To enable this property, set FilterBank to Gammatone.

Data Types: single | double

Domain for filter bank design, specified as either 'Hz' or 'Bin'. The filter bank is designed as overlapped triangles with band edges specified by the BandEdges property.

The BandEdges property is specified in Hz. When you set the design domain to:

  • 'Hz' –– Filter bank triangles are drawn in Hz and are mapped onto bins.

    Here is an example that plots the filter bank in bins when the FilterBankDesignDomain is set to 'Hz':

    [audioFile, fs] = audioread('NoisySpeech-16-22p5-mono-5secs.wav');
duration = round(0.02*fs); % 20 ms audio segment
audioSegment = audioFile(5500:5500+duration-1);
cepFeatures = cepstralFeatureExtractor('SampleRate',fs)
    cepFeatures = 
 cepstralFeatureExtractor with properties:

   Properties
                InputDomain: 'Time'
                  NumCoeffs: 13
                  FFTLength: []
                  LogEnergy: 'Append'
                 SampleRate: 22500

   Advanced Properties
                  BandEdges: [1×42 double]
     FilterBankDesignDomain: 'Hz'
    FilterBankNormalization: 'Bandwidth'
    Pass the audio segment as an input to the cepstral feature extractor algorithm to lock the object.
    [coeffs,delta,deltaDelta] = cepFeatures(audioSegment);
    Use the getFilters function to get the filter bank. Plot the filter bank.
    [filterbank, freq] = getFilters(cepFeatures);
plot(freq(1:150),filterbank(1:150,:))

    For details, see [1].

  • 'Bin' –– The bandedge frequencies in 'Hz' are converted to bins. The filter bank triangles are drawn symmetrically in bins.

    Change the FilterBankDesignDomain property to 'Bin':

    release(cepFeatures);
cepFeatures.FilterBankDesignDomain = 'Bin';
[coeffs,delta,deltaDelta] = cepFeatures(audioSegment);
[filterbank, freq] = getFilters(cepFeatures);
plot(freq(1:150),filterbank(1:150,:))

    For details, see [2].

Dependencies

To enable this property, set FilterBank to Mel.

Data Types: char | string

Normalization technique used on the weights of the filter bank, specified as:

  • 'Bandwidth' –– The weights of each bandpass filter are normalized by the corresponding bandwidth of the filter.

  • 'Area' –– The weights of each bandpass filter are normalized by the corresponding area of the bandpass filter.

  • 'None' –– The weights of the filter are not normalized.

Data Types: char | string

Usage

Syntax

[coeffs,delta,deltaDelta] = cepFeatures(audioIn)

Description

example

[coeffs,delta,deltaDelta] = cepFeatures(audioIn) returns the cepstral coefficients, the log energy, the delta, and the delta-delta.

The log energy value prepends the coefficient vector or replaces the first element of the coefficients vector based on whether you set the LogEnergy property to 'Append' or 'Replace'. For details, see coeffs.

Input Arguments

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Input signal, specified as a column vector or matrix. If InputDomain is set to 'Time', specify audioIn as a real-valued frame of audio data. If InputDomain is set to 'Frequency', specify audioIn as a real- or complex-valued discrete Fourier transform. If specified as a matrix, the columns are treated as independent audio channels.

Data Types: single | double
Complex Number Support: Yes

Output Arguments

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Cepstral coefficients, returned as a column vector or a matrix. If the coefficients matrix is an N-by-M matrix, N is determined by the values you specify in NumCoeffs and LogEnergy properties. M equals the number of input audio channels.

When the LogEnergy property is set to:

  • 'Append' –– The object prepends the log energy value to the coefficients vector. The length of the coefficients vector is 1 + NumCoeffs. This is the default setting of the LogEnergy property.

  • 'Replace' –– The object replaces the first coefficient with the log energy of the signal. The length of the coefficients vector is NumCoeffs.

  • 'Ignore' –– The object does not calculate or return the log energy.

Data Types: single | double

Change in coefficients over consecutive calls to the algorithm, returned as a vector or a matrix. The delta array is of the same size and data type as the coeffs array.

In this example, cepFeatures is the cepstral feature extractor that accepts audio input signal sampled at 12 kHz. Stream in three segments of audio signal on three consecutive calls to the object algorithm. Return the cepstral coefficients of the filter bank and the corresponding delta values. 

cepFeatures = cepstralFeatureExtractor('SampleRate',12000);
[coeff1,delta1] = cepFeatures(audioIn);
[coeff2,delta2] = cepFeatures(audioIn);
[coeff3,delta3] = cepFeatures(audioIn);

delta2 is computed as coeff2-coeff1, while delta3 is computed as coeff3-coeff2. The initial array, delta1, is an array of zeros.

Data Types: single | double

Change in delta values over consecutive calls to the algorithm, returned as a vector or a matrix. The deltaDelta array is the same size and data type as the coeffs and delta arrays.

In this example, consecutive calls to the cepstral feature extractor algorithm return the deltaDelta values in addition to the coefficients and the delta values.

cepFeatures = cepstralFeatureExtractor('SampleRate',12000);
[coeff1,delta1,deltaDelta1] = cepFeatures(audioIn);
[coeff2,delta2,deltaDelta2] = cepFeatures(audioIn);
[coeff3,delta3,deltaDelta3] = cepFeatures(audioIn);

deltaDelta2 is computed as delta2-delta1, while deltaDelta3 is computed as delta3-delta2. The initial array, deltaDelta1, is an array of zeros.

Data Types: single | double

Object Functions

To use an object function, specify the System object as the first input argument. For example, to release system resources of a System object named obj, use this syntax:

release(obj)

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getFiltersGet auditory filter bank
cloneCreate duplicate System object
isLockedDetermine if System object is in use
releaseRelease resources and allow changes to System object property values and input characteristics
resetReset internal states of System object
stepRun System object algorithm

Examples

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Open Live Script

Extract the mel frequency cepstral coefficients and the log energy values of segments in a speech file. Return delta, the difference between current and the previous cepstral coefficients, and deltaDelta, the difference between the current and the previous delta values. The log energy value the object computes can prepend the coefficients vector or replace the first element of the coefficients vector. This is done based on whether you set the LogEnergy property of the cepstralFeatureExtractor object to 'Replace' or 'Append'.

Read an audio signal from 'Counting-16-44p1-mono-15secs.wav' file. Extract a 40 ms segment from the audio data. Create a cepstralFeatureExtractor object. The cepstral coefficients computed by the default object are the mel frequency coefficients. In addition, the object computes the log energy, delta, and delta-delta values of the audio segment.

[audioFile, fs] = audioread('Counting-16-44p1-mono-15secs.wav');
duration = round(0.04*fs); % 40 ms
audioSegment = audioFile(40000:40000+duration-1);
cepFeatures = cepstralFeatureExtractor('SampleRate',fs)
cepFeatures = 
  cepstralFeatureExtractor with properties:

   Properties
       FilterBank: 'Mel'
      InputDomain: 'Time'
        NumCoeffs: 13
    Rectification: 'Log'
        FFTLength: []
        LogEnergy: 'Append'
       SampleRate: 44100

  Show all properties

The LogEnergy property is set to 'Append'. The first element in the coefficients vector is the log energy value and the remaining elements are the 13 cepstral coefficients computed by the object. The number of cepstral coefficients is determined by the value you specify in the NumCoeffs property.

[coeffs,delta,deltaDelta] = cepFeatures(audioSegment)
coeffs = 14×1

    5.2999
   -4.9406
    3.6130
    0.4397
   -0.2280
   -1.1068
    0.6679
    0.6367
   -0.3869
    0.6127
      ⋮


delta = 14×1

     0
     0
     0
     0
     0
     0
     0
     0
     0
     0
      ⋮


deltaDelta = 14×1

     0
     0
     0
     0
     0
     0
     0
     0
     0
     0
      ⋮

The initial values for the delta and deltaDelta arrays are always zero. Consider another 40 ms audio segment in the file and extract the cepstral features from this segment.

audioSegmentTwo = audioFile(5820:5820+duration-1);
[coeffsTwo,deltaTwo,deltaDeltaTwo] = cepFeatures(audioSegmentTwo)
coeffsTwo = 14×1

   -0.1582
  -15.9507
    2.4295
    0.2835
    0.4345
    0.4382
    0.6040
    0.4168
    0.1846
    0.2636
      ⋮


deltaTwo = 14×1

   -5.4581
  -11.0101
   -1.1836
   -0.1561
    0.6625
    1.5449
   -0.0639
   -0.2199
    0.5715
   -0.3491
      ⋮


deltaDeltaTwo = 14×1

   -5.4581
  -11.0101
   -1.1836
   -0.1561
    0.6625
    1.5449
   -0.0639
   -0.2199
    0.5715
   -0.3491
      ⋮

Verify that the difference between coeffsTwo and coeffs vectors equals deltaTwo.

isequal(coeffsTwo-coeffs,deltaTwo)
ans = logical
   1

Verify that the difference between deltaTwo and delta vectors equals deltaDeltaTwo.

isequal(deltaTwo-delta,deltaDeltaTwo)
ans = logical
   1
Open Live Script

Many feature extraction techniques operate on the frequency domain. Converting an audio signal to the frequency domain only once is efficient. In this example, you convert a streaming audio signal to the frequency domain and feed that signal into a voice activity detector. If speech is present, mel-frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCC) features are extracted from the frequency-domain signal using the cepstralFeatureExtractor System object™.

Create a dsp.AudioFileReader System object to read from an audio file.

fileReader = dsp.AudioFileReader('Counting-16-44p1-mono-15secs.wav');
fs = fileReader.SampleRate;

Process the audio in 30 ms frames with a 10 ms hop. Create a default dsp.AsyncBuffer object to manage overlap between audio frames.

samplesPerFrame = ceil(0.03*fs);
samplesPerHop = ceil(0.01*fs);
samplesPerOverlap = samplesPerFrame - samplesPerHop;

fileReader.SamplesPerFrame = samplesPerHop;
buffer = dsp.AsyncBuffer;

Create a voiceActivityDetector System object and a cepstralFeatureExtractor System object. Specify that they operate in the frequency domain. Create a dsp.SignalSink to log the extracted cepstral features.

VAD = voiceActivityDetector('InputDomain','Frequency');
cepFeatures = cepstralFeatureExtractor('InputDomain','Frequency','SampleRate',fs,'LogEnergy','Replace');
sink = dsp.SignalSink;

In an audio stream loop:

  1. Read one hop's of samples from the audio file and save the samples into the buffer.

  2. Read a frame from the buffer with specified overlap from the previous frame.

  3. Call the voice activity detector to get the probability of speech for the frame under analysis.

  4. If the frame under analysis has a probability of speech greater than 0.75, extract cepstral features and log the features using the signal sink. If the frame under analysis has a probability of speech less than 0.75, write a vector of NaNs to the sink.

threshold = 0.75;
nanVector = nan(1,13);
while ~isDone(fileReader)
    audioIn = fileReader();
    write(buffer,audioIn);
    
    overlappedAudio = read(buffer,samplesPerFrame,samplesPerOverlap);
    X = fft(overlappedAudio,2048);
    
    probabilityOfSpeech = VAD(X);
    if probabilityOfSpeech > threshold
        xFeatures = cepFeatures(X);
        sink(xFeatures')
    else
        sink(nanVector)
    end
end

Visualize the cepstral coefficients over time.

timeVector = linspace(0,15,size(sink.Buffer,1));
plot(timeVector,sink.Buffer)
xlabel('Time (s)')
ylabel('MFCC Amplitude')
legend('Log-Energy','c1','c2','c3','c4','c5','c6','c7','c8','c9','c10','c11','c12')

Open Script

Create a dsp.AudioFileReader object to read in audio data frame-by-frame. Create an audioDeviceWriter to write the audio to your sound card. Create a dsp.ArrayPlot to visualize the GTCC over time.

fileReader = dsp.AudioFileReader('RandomOscThree-24-96-stereo-13secs.aif');
deviceWriter = audioDeviceWriter(fileReader.SampleRate);
scope = dsp.ArrayPlot;

Create a cepstralFeatureExtractor that extracts GTCC.

cepFeatures = cepstralFeatureExtractor('FilterBank','Gammatone', ...
                                       'SampleRate',fileReader.SampleRate);

In an audio stream loop:

  1. Read in a frame of audio data.

  2. Extract the GTCC from the frame of audio.

  3. Visualize the GTCC.

  4. Write the audio frame to your device.

while ~isDone(fileReader)
    audioIn = fileReader();
    coeffs = cepFeatures(audioIn);
    scope(coeffs)
    deviceWriter(audioIn);
end

release(cepFeatures)
release(scope)
release(fileReader)

Algorithms

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Compatibility Considerations

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Not recommended starting in R2020b

References

Extended Capabilities

See Also

| | | | | |

Topics

Introduced in R2018a

Audio Toolbox Documentation

Support