Fourier Chromagrams for Fingerprinting, Verification and Authentication of Digital Audio Recordings

In this paper, a new approach for calculating binary audio fingerprints was proposed. This approach was based on the analysis of Fourier chromagrams obtained from the processed music recordings (audio files). The calculated binary audio fingerprints allow for bit-by-bit matching and comparison of original and modified music recordings. For performance testing, a dataset of over 50 original recordings of music played on a variety of instruments using different playing techniques was collected. In addition, distorted versions of the original recordings with altered tempo and realistic additive noise were produced and added to the test dataset. Calculations of similarity values between different audio fingerprints within the same groups of music recordings help reveal the expected robustness of the proposed approach against the possible distortions mentioned earlier. The impacts of distortions on chromagrams and calculated audio fingerprints were thoroughly analyzed and discussed in the paper. The median values of the similarity between the original and distorted recordings were found to be greater than 85%. The proposed approach proves to be quite useful in real life forensic studies and tasks of verification and authentication of music pieces and recordings.