Smart-Median: A New Real-Time Algorithm for Smoothing Singing Pitch Contours

Featured Application Some of the applications of this study are improving pitch estimation, removing outliers and errors, singing analysis, voice analysis, singing assessment, and singing information retrieval. Pitch detection is usually one of the fundamental steps in audio signal processing. However, it is common for pitch detectors to estimate a portion of the fundamental frequencies incorrectly, especially in real-time environments and when applied to singing. Therefore, the estimated pitch contour usually has errors. To remove these errors, a contour smoother algorithm should be employed. However, because none of the current contour-smoother algorithms has been explicitly designed to be applied to contours generated from singing, they are often unsuitable for this purpose. Therefore, this article aims to introduce a new smoother algorithm that rectifies this. The proposed smoother algorithm is compared with 15 other smoother algorithms over approximately 2700 pitch contours. Four metrics were used for the comparison. According to all the metrics, the proposed algorithm could smooth the contours more accurately than other algorithms. A distinct conclusion is that smoother algorithms should be designed according to the contour type and the result's final applications.

Automated summary

This article introduces a new smoother algorithm for pitch contours and compares it with 15 other existing algorithms. The proposed algorithm is shown to smooth the contours more accurately, highlighting the importance of designing smoother algorithms based on contour types and intended applications.