Machine listening ([ml] extra)

Two assistants, both of which are positioned as helpers around the human ear rather than replacements for it. Both operate on the W (omni) channel, downmixed and resampled, since the models are trained on 16/32 kHz mono internet audio, and quiet domestic material is out of their training distribution.

AudioSet tagging (PANNs)

ambiscape draft runs PANNs CNN14 (527 AudioSet classes) on 10-second windows around detected events and steady states, and writes the top classes into the draft's listening hints:

{"t": "07:56:16", "az": 150.0, "el": 5.0,
 "tags": [{"label": "Cupboard open or close", "p": 0.49},
          {"label": "Door", "p": 0.49}]}

AudioSet's taxonomy includes remarkably apt classes for indoor soundscape work (Air conditioning, Refrigerator, Church bell, Pigeon/dove, Water tap, Footsteps, Speech). The intended reading is that the tagger says what and the intensity vector says from where, which together give a labelled spatial event. Confirm by ear; scores on low-SNR ambience are suggestions.

Speech privacy gate (silero-vad)

ambiscape speechgate segment.wav              # one file
ambiscape speechgate segments/ --threshold 0.01

Reports the fraction of speech per file and a PASS/FAIL verdict (default: fail above 1 % speech). Run it on every excerpt before publishing (Freesound, Zenodo, supplementary material), since recordings made in homes routinely catch a few words the recordist forgot. Exit code 2 on any failure, so it slots into scripts.

Level normalisation, and comparing recorders (0.29.0)

silero applies a fixed probability threshold to whatever level reaches it, so before 0.29.0 the result was a function of recording gain as much as of speech. The same minute of a real recording measured 0.513 speech at unity gain, 0.289 at −12 dB, 0.110 at −24 dB and 0.000 at −30 dB.

speech_fraction now scales its input to a fixed RMS first, and that minute reads 0.537 at all four gains. Anything that compared speech fractions between recorders before 0.29.0 was comparing their gains too, and should be recomputed; a single recorder against itself over time is far less affected. normalize=False reproduces the old numbers.

The gate detects voice activity, not intelligibility, which makes it a conservative proxy. For a stricter check on borderline files, listen to the flagged regions (first_speech_at_s is reported).