Sound database retrieved by sound

In this paper, we propose a sound-database system, which is able to extract stored data using sound as a key for the query. This ability realizes the sound extraction without having to specify the acoustical characteristics of the sound. The system repetitively searches and presents sounds, which have similarity in timbre to the key sound, until the user finds a satisfactory sample. The parameters that characterize a sound's timbre, which is a psychoacoustical factor for sound perception, are adopted as the sound's indices in the database and used for similarity matching in the searching process. Because the definition of similarity in sounds differs from user to user, the proposed system is equipped with an adaptive preference-weighted searching mechanism that adapts its searching focus based on the user's preference. Because of the ability of the proposed system to realize an intuitive query, this system can be broadly used by a user without special acoustical knowledge.