Sparse Representations in Audio and Music: From Coding to Source Separation

Sparse representations have proved a powerful tool in the analysis and processing of audio signals and already lie at the heart of popular coding standards such as MP3 and Dolby AAC. In this paper we give an overview of a number of current and emerging applications of sparse representations in areas from audio coding, audio enhancement and music transcription to blind source separation solutions that can solve the cocktail party problem. In each case we will show how the prior assumption that the audio signals are approximately sparse in some time-frequency representation allows us to address the associated signal processing task.