An objective test tool for pitch extractors' response attributes

TL;DR

This paper introduces an objective, unified measurement method for evaluating pitch extractors' responses to frequency-modulated signals, enabling comprehensive analysis and visualization of their behaviors.

Contribution

It presents a novel measurement technique using extended time-stretched pulses and binary orthogonal sequences, along with visualization tools, to assess pitch extractors' responses systematically.

Findings

Effective visualization of pitch extractor behaviors.

Over 2000 modulation response plots generated.

Performance improvements achieved through analysis.

Abstract

We propose an objective measurement method for pitch extractors' responses to frequency-modulated signals. It enables us to evaluate different pitch extractors with unified criteria. The method uses extended time-stretched pulses combined by binary orthogonal sequences. It provides simultaneous measurement results consisting of the linear and the non-linear time-invariant responses and random and time-varying responses. We tested representative pitch extractors using fundamental frequencies spanning 80~Hz to 800~Hz with 1/48 octave steps and produced more than 2000 modulation frequency response plots. We found that making scientific visualization by animating these plots enables us to understand different pitch extractors' behavior at once. Such efficient and effortless inspection is impossible by inspecting all individual plots. The proposed measurement method with visualization leads to further improvement of the performance of one of the extractors mentioned above. In other words, our procedure turns the specific pitch extractor into the best reliable measuring equipment that is crucial for scientific research. We open-sourced MATLAB codes of the proposed objective measurement method and visualization procedure.