Introduction to Audio Retrieval and Navigation Interfaces

This chapter pays justice to the preexisting specialized work that has made multimedia content processing technology possible. It also refers to several papers, in particular in emerging domains that would have been included in this collection if size limitations had not prevented it. The recent developments of audio retrieval and navigation interfaces are the history of the meeting between multimedia research and music and speech technology research. One of the reasons for multimedia research's success in delivering new technology and finding overlooked potential of existing technology is that it has worked within precisely defined paradigms of usage. Despite recent developments, the content-based retrieval of audio still faces major challenges. Efficient indexing and retrieval for large databases of music and for speech databases with many different locutors are still to be demonstrated. An approach combining navigation techniques and query/retrieval techniques is still in its infancy. Nevertheless, a core set of techniques has been developed, from which more systematic work can proceed.