Main sections and question main topics of the questionnaire [13].
\\n\\n
Dr. Pletser’s experience includes 30 years of working with the European Space Agency as a Senior Physicist/Engineer and coordinating their parabolic flight campaigns, and he is the Guinness World Record holder for the most number of aircraft flown (12) in parabolas, personally logging more than 7,300 parabolas.
\\n\\nSeeing the 5,000th book published makes us at the same time proud, happy, humble, and grateful. This is a great opportunity to stop and celebrate what we have done so far, but is also an opportunity to engage even more, grow, and succeed. It wouldn't be possible to get here without the synergy of team members’ hard work and authors and editors who devote time and their expertise into Open Access book publishing with us.
\\n\\nOver these years, we have gone from pioneering the scientific Open Access book publishing field to being the world’s largest Open Access book publisher. Nonetheless, our vision has remained the same: to meet the challenges of making relevant knowledge available to the worldwide community under the Open Access model.
\\n\\nWe are excited about the present, and we look forward to sharing many more successes in the future.
\\n\\nThank you all for being part of the journey. 5,000 times thank you!
\\n\\nNow with 5,000 titles available Open Access, which one will you read next?
\\n\\nRead, share and download for free: https://www.intechopen.com/books
\\n\\n\\n\\n
\\n"}]',published:!0,mainMedia:null},components:[{type:"htmlEditorComponent",content:'
Preparation of Space Experiments edited by international leading expert Dr. Vladimir Pletser, Director of Space Training Operations at Blue Abyss is the 5,000th Open Access book published by IntechOpen and our milestone publication!
\n\n"This book presents some of the current trends in space microgravity research. The eleven chapters introduce various facets of space research in physical sciences, human physiology and technology developed using the microgravity environment not only to improve our fundamental understanding in these domains but also to adapt this new knowledge for application on earth." says the editor. Listen what else Dr. Pletser has to say...
\n\n\n\nDr. Pletser’s experience includes 30 years of working with the European Space Agency as a Senior Physicist/Engineer and coordinating their parabolic flight campaigns, and he is the Guinness World Record holder for the most number of aircraft flown (12) in parabolas, personally logging more than 7,300 parabolas.
\n\nSeeing the 5,000th book published makes us at the same time proud, happy, humble, and grateful. This is a great opportunity to stop and celebrate what we have done so far, but is also an opportunity to engage even more, grow, and succeed. It wouldn't be possible to get here without the synergy of team members’ hard work and authors and editors who devote time and their expertise into Open Access book publishing with us.
\n\nOver these years, we have gone from pioneering the scientific Open Access book publishing field to being the world’s largest Open Access book publisher. Nonetheless, our vision has remained the same: to meet the challenges of making relevant knowledge available to the worldwide community under the Open Access model.
\n\nWe are excited about the present, and we look forward to sharing many more successes in the future.
\n\nThank you all for being part of the journey. 5,000 times thank you!
\n\nNow with 5,000 titles available Open Access, which one will you read next?
\n\nRead, share and download for free: https://www.intechopen.com/books
\n\n\n\n
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A Path to Sustained Success",doi:"10.5772/48414",slug:"certification-and-integration-of-environment-with-quality-and-safety-a-path-to-sustained-success",body:'According to Wright [1] certification of products and processes began during the 1960’s in the manufacturing industry, as a tool to control and assure the quality/conformity of products and services provided by suppliers to customers/consumers. Thus, the series of ISO 9000 was published first time, in 1987 and it was been created with a flexible character, to be reviewed periodically. Later, were published others normative references, which highlight the ISO 14001 in 1996 and OHSAS 18001 in 1999. This was also, the natural sequence of the certification processes in the organizations, i.e., began with the certification of quality management systems (QMS) followed by the environmental management systems (EMS) and after for the Occupational Health and Safety Management System (OHSMS). Hence, a high percentage of organizations with an EMS, in accordance with the ISO 14001, had also implemented, a certified QMS, in accordance with ISO 9001. At first the implementation of a QMS was particularly relevant in high demanding activity sectors, like the automotive and aeronautical industries, but it has rapidly extended to every activity sector, becoming a common requisite of any company worldwide and a factor of competitiveness and survival. Due to the increasingly demanding environmental legislation in developed countries, companies nowadays are required to seriously take into consideration not only environmental aspects associated to the production chain itself, but also to the life cycle of their products.
They are forced to implement suitable EMS to manage the environmental issues as for example at the level of the prevention and reduction of wastes. Consequently to promote and protect environment in a sustainable way. This is a particularly important issue for small and medium-sized companies (SMEs), which are considered to make up the vast majority of business in Europe)[2]. They are quoted as contributing 70% of global environmental pollution, with the majority coming from the manufacturing sector [3]. Thus, following both the Rio Conference in 1992 and GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) negotiations, international standards have become important for succeeding and for getting access to the markets; at the same time, there has been an increase in the interest of environmental management. Such regulatory and competitive pressures have caused firms to take into consideration the environmental issues within their own production and market plans. Many firms have attempted to seek an effective environmental management system. These have led to implementation and development of the ISO 14001 standard for assessing environmental management processes. Today, all over the world, many firms are seeking ISO 14001 certification [4]. Thus, improved environmental management in the industrial sector is required to protect the environment, protect human health and property, and to satisfy environmental requirements associated with international trade [5]. In a sense, the value of the ISO 14001 certificate, as a proof of environmental performance, is a combination of the supplier’s environmental ambitions, the advancement of supply chain practices of the customer and the ambitions of the certification bodies [6]. On other hand, according to Casadesús [7] and others authors, the interest shown by organizations and other entities linked by the implementation of environmental management systems (EMS), especially the family of ISO 14000 standards and the EMAS regulation in Europe, has grown spectacularly all over the world in recent years, even though a certain saturation has been detected in some countries. Thus, the implementation and management of all economical, environmental and social aspects within a company is gradually becoming a crucial requirement for any business and has become a widespread phenomenon around the world [8]. Large companies are increasingly requiring this management policy from their suppliers, establishing specific requests and performances that small and medium enterprises (SMEs) often find extremely difficult to accomplish. On other hand, there are many organizations which, either because of the demands of the market itself or because of other internal motivations, have implemented different Management Systems alongside their EMS.
In fact, although no reliable references on this matter have been found, it is quite plausible to think that the great majority of ISO 14001 – registered companies are also certified in accordance with the ISO 9001 standard [9]. Thus, quality management philosophy and methods have been imported into ISO 14001 from ISO 9000. As a result, it is not surprising that measurement and evaluation are enshrined as important hallmarks of an effective EMS. According Curkovic [38], a companys ability to reframe learnings from total quality management (TQM) is crucial to the successful implementation and use of environmentally responsible manufacturing (ERM) -based systems and procedures.
Generally speaking, this component of the EMS is considered effective when the contents of review meetings are well communicated, the focus of meetings is on improving the system, findings (i.e. about noncompliance, from various statistical charts, and audit results) are reported honestly, and corrective actions follow [10]. In some cases, the similarities between QMS and EMS systems can facilitate the integration of the two related management systems [11]. The people that work in environmental management and at the same time are members of quality teams, assure that quality management goes hand-in-hand with environmental management. The actions that are carried out to achieve quality are, in many situations, the same actions necessary, for example, to achieve effective environmental management. In line with this, ISO 14001 has become compatible with the ISO 9001. Consequently, the integration of environmental issues (including environmental protection and pollution prevention in the management of organizations through the implementation of an environmental management system) allow acquiring a deep insight of the most important environmental aspects associated with its activity, and identifying the processes that need to be improved through the implementation of effective environmental measures [12]. On other hand, according Curkovic [38] TQM focuses on waste as it applies to process inefficiencies, whereas ERM focuses more on pollution in the form of air emissions and solid and hazardous waste. Because the two concepts share a similar focus, it makes sense to use many of the TQM tools, methods, and practices in implementing an ERM-based system.
Moreover, human resources are the most valuable resource of any company or country, but not always the most valued. Thus, the greatest asset of any organization, any region or any country, are people and their know-how [13]. Therefore, among others, another system to be implemented in the organizations is the OHSMS. Thus, according Fernández-Muñiz [14], several fields are showing increasing interest in safety culture as a means of reducing accidents in the workplace. The literature shows that safety culture is a multidimensional concept. Hence, nowadays, companies that search greater profitability and better organization implement the quality systems, aiming at a reduction of defective products and lost time, searching for the loyalty of customers and searching for excellence. The progressive implementation of ideas and techniques related with the quality management is one of the clearest demonstrations of organizational innovation in the industry in the last decades. From the standpoint of the risk prevention literature, it has been argued that the use of advanced quality management systems help reduce accident rates because quality management methods are based on the principle of prevention rather than corrective actions. Hence, the concept of an OHSMS has become common over the past 20 years [15]. The people that work in safety management and at the same time, are members of quality teams, assure that quality management has a great relationship with risk management.
More than ever, today, is in question the business sustainability of the organizations and the focus should be placed far much more than financial results. These results will not verify if that focus does not prioritize also, the satisfaction, balanced, integrated and growing of the customers and others relevant Stakeholders, that are clearly and objectively the employees for example [16]. But according to the ISO – IMS publication [17], a common objective of management system standards is to assist organizations to manage the risks associated with providing products and services to customers and other stakeholders. On other hand the management system of the organizations is frequently split into a number of parts or sub-systems, which must be managed separately with relative independence. These parts or sub-systems of an organization\'s management system reflect the different needs and expectations of the stakeholders. Many organizations use standards, such as those related to quality, the environment and safety, among others, to manage certain aspects of their performance.
Within this framework, in order to have quality and excellence in products (or services), as well as in the management of the companies that manufacture and provide them, it has become imperative for the companies define and implement quality, environment and safety management system, according to ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and OHSAS 18001 standards, respectively. At the same time the companies must also improve and optimize, continually, these management systems to allow them to true added value for the companies and their stakeholders [16].
The following questions may arise: How can these three management systems be integrated? Can they be integrated? According to Santos [18] this is a problem that the most developed companies started to experience some time ago, and it has been discussed by various authors, that we highlight: McDonald [19], Arifin [20] and Bernardo [21] among others, who provides a summary of the degrees of integration according to some authors, and Labodová [22], who reported on the implementation of integrated management systems using a risk analyses based approach. Thus, according with the ISO 72:2001 Guide [23], the experience with management system standards issued by the ISO shows that there exist a number of common elements, which can be arranged under the following main subjects: policy; planning; implementation and operation; performance assessment; improvement and management review, as stated by Santos [13].
Related to the integration of management systems, Karapetrovic [9] states that there are many organizations that implement different management systems, either as a result of market demand either for internal reasons. During the combined audits in accordance with ISO 19011 [24] for Quality and/or Environmental Management Systems audits, it can be observed that the integration of the systems is implemented in a partial way by the integration of procedures by phases.
When it is observed that it exist similar procedures, those are adapted to the two systems, for exemple, quality and environment, and jointly audited. However, the manuals still individually separated. As stated by Santos [25], although an audit be integrated / joint, named as by "combined audit", the respective reports are often kept separate so that any nonconformities detected in one of the systems do not implicate to stop the other system that complies with the respective standard. This could implicate the loose of clients, which would be a backward step for the company, and is considered one of the obstacles to a quicker integration. Suditu [26], associates to the integration of management systems internal motivations and corresponding benefits, by dividing them into: 1 - Organisational – improvement of the quality of the management by downsizing of three departments into one and reducing barriers between individual systems; 2 - Financial – reduction in auditing costs; 3-Employees – increased motivation, awareness and competences; 4 - External motivations and corresponding benefits, by dividing them into: Commercial – competitive advantage, improved market position, gain of new clients and satisfying current ones; Communication – improved image of the organisation, improved relationships with Stakeholders and evidence of legal compliance; In fact, significant differences in these areas have not been found, and it is fairly plausible that the vast majority of companies certified under ISO 14001 are also certified under the ISO 9001 standard, according to Santos [13].
Therefore, a new necessity has emerged in organisations, namely to integrate these systems into a single IMS - Integrated Management System and we cannot forget the fact that the environmental improvement of the product must be considered in relation to the impacts on Quality & Health and Safety, as mentioned by Jørgensen [27]. Therefore, the idea of an IMS - Integrated Management System consists of establishing correspondences and to combine two or more independent management systems, for example in accordance with ISO 9001, ISO 14001, and OHSAS 18001. Evidence of this can be seen in table A.1 - of the annex A - of OHSAS 18001:2007 [28]. Despite having their origins in different aspects of company performance, the Quality, Environment and Safety Management Systems have a lot in common, as mentioned by Fresner [12] and Block [29], among other authors. The integration of these management systems is a path that can be followed, and the ISO 19011 standard - Guidelines for auditing management systems [24] is a good example of the future. According to Santos [13] the future lies in the integration of these management systems, managed by only one multidisciplinary team with training and skills in several areas, thereby economizing both financial and human resources.
The Portuguese industry, mainly, consists of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), which activity and performance are crucial factors for the country development. SMEs provide 75% of the total labour force employed in industry, trade and services. According to the website of the Ministry of Economy and Innovation [30] SMEs are responsible of 99.5% of national business, generating 74.7% of employment and held 59.8% of sales nationwide. They are the basis of Portuguese economy. A good example of Management Systems Certification and Integration in Portugal is represented in Figure 1.
Documental structure of the Integrated Management Systems at Kupper & Schmidt [13]
For a long time, the only Foundry in the country to have its Quality, Environment and Health and Safety systems certified was Kupper and Schmidt, a SME that supplies exclusively the automotive industry and exports about 98% of its production to the European and American markets. Just a few years after starting its activity the company had its Quality System already certified by the main customers. In 1997 it was certified according to ISO 9002 standard, in 1998 by QS – 9000, in 1999 by VDA 6.1, and in 2001 by ISO/TS 16949 standards. In 2000 the company focused in Environment, and got the certification according to ISO 14001 standard. Since 2002 the company has its OHSMS certified according to OHSAS 18001 [31]. Presently, the company runs an Integrated Management System in what concerns to management procedures, operating instructions and documentation.
The objective of this work was to contribute to characterize the situation about the Integration of Environment with Quality and Safety in the Portuguese companies, as well, highlight the benefits obtained with the certification and integration and show that, it is a path to sustained success.
In the last years there has been a significant increase in the number of Portuguese companies certified in Quality, Environment and Health and Safety. Some of them have a degree of integration of such systems which are not known. In order to make such characterization a survey based on a questionnaire was carried out in several Portuguese SMEs.
The questionnaire was sent via e-mail or delivered personally in hand, explaining and justifying its main objectives and it was organized in five sections, according to Table 1. Both qualitative and quantitative answers were asked, depending on the nature of the question and the available data to give an accurate response. The questionnaire was sent by e-mail together with a cover letter describing the objectives of the research and including some answering instructions to 300 SME with a certified quality management system. 162 companies were located in the centre region of Portugal (including Lisbon area), 114 in the northern region (including Oporto area) and 24 in regions located south of Lisbon. According to the data available from the “SMEs Portugal Association” this distribution is proportional to the location of SMEs within the Portuguese territory [32].
80 companies answered the inquiry, but only 46 have been validated, thus representing the sample size of the Portuguese territory. From those 46 companies, 20 (43%) were from the Trade/Services activity sector, 17 (37%) from the Industrial sector, 5 (11%) from the Electricity/Telecommunications sector and 4 (9%) from the Construction area (Figure 2).
Main Sections | Questionnaire main topics |
General Description of the Company | Number of employees; Volume of business; Branch of activity; Main products and markets; etc. |
QMS | Year of ISO 9001 certification; Main reasons for Quality certification. Main difficulties; Main benefits that arose from certification (new costumers, image, competitiveness, business increase, quality improvement, customer satisfaction, products innovation, organization improvements, etc.); Main drawbacks; Quality tools that the company uses. |
EMS | Year of ISO 14001 certification; Main reasons for Environmental certification; Main difficulties; Main benefits that arose from certification (waste reduction, waste destination, environmental costs reduction, etc); Main drawbacks. |
OHSMS | Year of OHSAS 14001 certification; Main reasons for Health and Safety certification; Main difficulties; Main benefits that arose from certification (reduction of the number of accidents, productivity increase, absenteeism, etc);Main drawbacks. |
IMS | Running independently or integrated; Degree of integration (integrated systems, what is integrated, reasons for integration, management structure, etc); Main benefits of integration (cost reduction, management simplification, etc); Main difficulties; Main drawbacks. |
Main sections and question main topics of the questionnaire [13].
Distribution of participating companies by sector of activity
About 80 questionnaires were received. The main criteria for validation were to be a SME, to have the ISO 9001 QMS certification and to have answered the main questions completely. Thus, only 46 were completed properly. Data was worked and some results presented [13 ; 33]. However, it is known that there are SMEs with other certified systems, among them the EMS. An additional criterion was to have the ISO 14001 EMS certification. Initially, 12 SMEs (26,1%) fulfilled such criterion but later, 5 questionnaires was completed what totalized 17 SMEs (36,9%). This was the sample for SMEs with EMS certified. Also initially only 7 SMEs (15,2%) had the OHSMS certified according OHSAS 18001. Later it was completed and validated more 5 questionnaires, which totalize 12 SMEs (26,1%) with the OHSMS certified according OHSAS 18001. This is the sample for SMEs with OHSMS certified.
Once the information has been collected, the next step consisted of the analysis and interpretation of data. An Excel file has been created with the collected data, and then exported to SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences). SPSS is powerful software to support statistics, which provides complex statistical calculations. However, due to the small sample size, two obstacles came up: knowing what statistical test to use and to interpret correctly the results from calculations. Thus:
Statistical techniques - It was used primarily to inductive and descriptive statistics: average, frequency plots, the principal component analysis, cluster analysis and statistical inference to find the important conclusions about the population inferred from analysis of the sample, bearing in mind the limitation its reduced size.
KMO and sphericity test of Bartlett\'s - the KMO and Bartlett test are two statistical procedures that allow measuring the quality of the correlation between variables. The Kaiser-Meyer_Olkin (KMO) is a statistic test that varies between 0 and 1 and compares the zero-order correlations with the partial correlations observed between the variables.
Internal consistency Cronbach\'s Alpha - Cronbach\'s Alpha is commonly used to measure internal consistency of a group of variables (items). It can be defined as the correlation that is expected to get between the scale and other scales used the same hypothetical universe with an equal number of items that measure the same characteristic.
Cluster analysis - is also a technique of exploratory multivariate analysis that allows to group variables into homogeneous groups or to compact one or more common characteristics. Each observation belonging to a particular cluster is similar to all others belonging to that cluster, and is different from the observations belonging to other clusters. We chose to use the method of cluster analysis to detect groups in the original variables, the issues where the sample was small, and the principal component analysis had not reached a conclusion. The analysis of the survey was directed to the most relevant items of the questionnaire.
The principal component analysis to data was applied with the help of SPSS, which allows an investigation of the multivariate structure, and a better interpretation of data. The internal consistency of the subject is given by Cronbach\'s Alpha index which was applied to the 19 selected variables, considering 5 analysis components, which was 0.901. As this value was greater than 0.7, the responses were considered as trustworthy and free of errors. [33]. On this context, we used punctuation 4 for “Greater Impact”, 3 for “Impact”, 2 for “Little Impact” and 1 for “No impact”. The resume of results of this work was published in the Journal of Cleaner Production [13].
Moreover, it was made a case study. The investigation was developed in business environment at an Portuguese Company - the Itron – Portugal, that over the years has been adopting, in whole or in part, gradually and individualized standards or specifications of different Management Systems, relevant to the ISO 14001 (Environmental Management Systems) ISO 9001 (Quality Management Systems), OHSAS 18001/NP 4397 (Safety and Health Management Systems). While it is imperative to assess the perception of employees of the Company on the structuring, implementation and evaluation of the integration model and its validation in a real work environment, it was developed an internal research supported in an inductive approach in the context of the investigator\'s experiences with the object and the environment of the study.
The technique used to evaluate the contributions to the structure of the model proposed of IMS_QES was the internal investigation by questionnaire to the Collaborators of the company. The total population was 160 employees which are the organization structure of the different branches and levels. The sample that was considered - 49 employees, represent around 30.62% of the total Collaborators. 42 Collaborators answered to the questionnaire which is an overall reply rate of 86%. This rate represents a strong adherence, at all hierarchy levels of the Organization.
In a first phase, the model was developed supported on the Lean philosophy, in order to the simplification and consequent resolution of problems and gains in efficiency of existing management systems in the company (referred as Sub-systems), which along the years were adopted gradually, but individualized and often isolated between to each other.
Were considered four main questions and for each of them several topics as described in the table 2.
Main Sections | Questionnaire main topics |
1 - Importance of motivation factors for the implementation of the IMS_QES. | Improving the image of the Company Rationalizing and optimizing the management of the resources ( financial, material and human) Facilitating the management of the three components for the Sustainable Development of the Organization and of the Business Increasing requirements of the Costumers Competitive advantage and strategic vision of the Business Natural evolution of the Management Systems in the Company The continual improvement of Quality, Environment and Safety Management Systems involves their integration |
2 - Stakeholder influences on the performance and evolution of an IMS-QES | ITRON Group - Orientations and evolution of QES and Sustainability policies Customers, competitors, insurance companies, suppliers and official QES entities Financial institutions Local Management group and Collaborators |
3 - Main Internal difficulties for the development of the IMS-QES model and its implementation | Deficit of human and material resources due to the strongly competitive environment and costs reduction; Resistance to change Diversity of products and services vis-a-vis Customer’s requirements and legal and other requirements Do not explicitly fit in the objectives and priorities of the ITRON - Portugal Lack of internal competences in Integration Management Systems Do not exist an international standard for the integration of Management Systems |
4 - Potential benefits resulting from the implementation of the IMS-QES | Elimination of conflicts between individual Systems, and consequent resource optimization, namely human resources; Elimination of several organizational waste including at the level of bureaucracy associated to the sub systems Quality, Environment and Safety Common management policy, objectives, goals and KPIs - Key Process Indicators related to QES performance Improvement of the internal and external image of the company in the aim of the QES issues Involvement and consolidation, by ALL employees, of a continual improvement culture, attitudes and values of global QES scope Reduction of the number of internal and/or external audits and to Suppliers Improvement at the level of coordinated and integrated management of the Risk associated to the Safety of People, Infrastructure, Environment, and Products Greater employee valorization and motivation Integrated management of several components of Sustainability in a Global Market; Improvement of the partnership relationships with Suppliers of goods and services; |
Main sections and question main topics of the questionnaire used on the investigation [34].
The first system that was certified in majority of the companies was the QMS. When this system was consolidated, then the EMS was certified. Only when this system was consolidated, companies certified the OHSMS which has started quite recently. After the three certifications, they started in a staggered way to develop integrated procedures to integrate two systems (quality and environment or safety), and whenever possible, the three systems (quality, environment and safety) [13 ; 25].
This has been, more or less, the general rule that Portuguese SMEs have adopted, fact that was confirmed by the number of certifications, where the quality stands out in the first place (QMS), followed by environmental certification (EMS) and finally the safety certification (OHSMS).
However, we know that some companies have adopted another rule in sporadic cases. After the certification of quality according to ISO 9001, common procedures have been designed for the Environmental Management System (EMS) and the Occupational Health and Safety Management System (OHSMS) at work certification, which worked as the embryo for the implementation of a set of Integrated Management procedures [13].
Certification is certainly a strategic option for developing organizations in the sense of a wiliness to improve and gain market share. With the reality of the growing number of certified companies, it is important to analyze and quantify the benefits that companies have gained from the certification of their quality system.
Considering the descriptive analysis of responses and the analysis of each item separately, it can be concluded that certification of QMS led companies to improve their internal organization, to make it easier the access to information, improved the internal evaluation of the management systems (namely through continuous audits in time) and had a beneficial effect on the company image, as depicted in Table 3.
Major Impact | Impact | Little Impact | No Impact | |
Internal Organization of the company | 72% | 22% | 6% | 0% |
Continuous assessment through internal audits | 54% | 44% | 2% | 0% |
Company image | 52% | 46% | 2% | 0% |
Ease of access to information | 44% | 39% | 15% | 2% |
Aspects of the company management where QMS had the greatest impact/benefit [13]
It is clear from Table 3 that these were, in fact, the major benefits of QMS certification. 72% of the companies referred that the major achievement was in their internal organization, and only 6% have referred that certification had little impact on this particular aspect. 52% of the companies stated that their image was improved as a consequence of certification. The basis for these statement was the increase in the number of new or potentially new customers, the drastic reduction of customers rejections and increase of customers satisfaction (evaluated not only by the decrease in the number of rejections, as well as by the increase in the sales volume for those same customers and the increased satisfaction with the overall quality of the products). Moreover, any company reported to have not felt some sort of impact in any aspect of their management structure, as inferred by the results presented in column "no impact" of Table 3.
In what concerns to EMS certification, the main reasons referred for certification have been environment promotion and protection, improvement of the company\'s image on this field, improvement of life quality inside and in the surroundings of the enterprise and a marketing strategy, with particular relevance for the first three. The main benefits of EMS certification were classified as having had major, relevant and low or any impact in several fields. Those fields where a major impact of certification have been detected were environment protection (evaluated by the decrease in the amount of residues and disposal costs), better integration of the company in the community, rationalization of natural resources, implementation of recycling techniques (and consequent decrease of costs related to raw-materials acquisition), legislation compliance and consequent decrease of penalty costs. Those companies with non-certified EMS refer to lack of investment support, high implementation costs when compared with the foreseen benefits of certification, or irrelevant environmental risks associated to their activity as the main reasons for their non-certification option/decision.
The main benefits that companies have gained from the OHSMS certification were: “Improvement of working conditions” clearly took the majority with 91.6% of the responses. Another important question with great impact was “Ensuring compliance with legislation” with 83.3% of responses. Legislation exists which must be fulfilled and most of Portuguese SMEs with certified OHSMS fulfill that legislation work; another strong question was “Notice to workers about the risks and dangers at work” and 75% of the SMEs responded affirmatively. Hence, it can be concluded that there is “better internal communication for workers about the risks and hazards” when an OHSMS is implemented and certified.
More than ever, today is in question the sustainability of the organizations and the focus should be placed far beyond the financial results. These will no longer verify it is not prioritize also the continual satisfaction, balanced, integrated and growing of the customers and other stakeholders taking as benchmarks for orientation and acting the dimensions of sustainability - economic, environmental and social and too the organizational and operational factors of the competitiveness.
There exist a set of management system standards that apply to any type of organisation and activity. Others will certainly be created. These standards like as: NP EN ISO 9001:2008, NP EN ISO 9004:2011, NP EN ISO14001:2004, OHSAS 18001:2008/NP 43397:2008, NP EN ISO/IEC 17025:2005, SA 8000:2001 /NP 4469-1:2008, NP 4457:2007, ISO 31000:2009, ISO/IEC 27001:2005, NP 4427:2004, PAS 99:2006, cover a wide array of different disciplines, aims and activities of organisation and operation of the Enterprises including the interfaces and satisfaction of all theirs stakeholders. In itself, this fact leads to a greater perception and awareness of challenges and brings sustainability to businesses, with which Organisations face a fiercely competitive global market in which the only thing that does not change is change itself [34]. Several of these standards, having been published recently, require that a lot of supplementary effort first be put at the level of the learning process needed considering the route that must be taken by organisations towards full implementation, which should be carried out in a balanced manner with added value.
In this context, Quality, Environment and Safety Management Systems certification have a great impact in companies, at internal, external and operational levels. The certification of these Management Systems includes many common procedures that can be run in an integrated basis, as illustrated in Figure 3.
In fact and according to the ISO – IMS publication (The integrated use of management systems standards) [23], a common objective of management system standards is to assist organisations to manage the risks associated with providing products and services to customers and other stakeholders. On other hand the management system of the organisations is frequently split into a number of parts or sub-systems, which must be managed separately with relative independence. These parts or sub-systems of an organisation\'s management system reflect the different needs and expectations of the stakeholders. Many organisations use standards, such as those related to quality, the environment and safety, among others, to manage certain aspects of their performance.
The synergy that an Integrated Management System (IMS) can offer have driven organizations into higher levels of performance at a cost lower than that associated to independent certification management systems. The simple schematic Figure 3 represents the vision of an IMS, suggesting that they have common information and procedures and at same time others standards, used in the companies, are involved in the organization and functioning of them.
Integration - a route towards sustained success [34]
Integration can be achieved at different levels, leading to partially or fully integrated systems. A partial integrated system keeps their manuals separated using, as far as possible, integrated procedures. A fully integrated system is based in a single manual that integrates unified management systems requirements.
Integration of Quality, Environment and Safety Management Systems are known to have potential benefits over the companies’ efficiency. Moreover, integrating IMS-QES enhances organizational performance. Thus, in a team, all employees contribute to the mission and to the defense of the values of a unique organization, bringing up the overall development of the company, thus improving the image of the organization. However, an unsuitable integration process can bring additional problems, like increased strictness, inefficiency and even professional and cultural conflicts. Thus, a careful reflexion about the way to start and run an integration process is crucial.
One of the activities that forms part of the scope and objectives of the case study to which we have paid particular attention is the compatibility of the requirements of the standards, in context and framework of the characterization of the company\'s situation, backed up by an analysis of these standards. According to the Table 4 this compatibility represents, at our understanding, the starting point for consequents activities of integration, simplification and optimization, to achieve a level of the strictly necessary and consequently the three subsystems - QMS, EMS, and OHSMS are integrated to the maximum extent possible.
The ISO defines as principles of Quality Management: Customer focus; leadership; involvement of people; process approach; system approach to management; continual improvement; factual approach to decision making and mutually beneficial supplier relationships. According to the ISO Guide 72:2001, anyone drafting these and other management standards must take into account that the corresponding management systems must consider the following phases of the PDCA cycle - Plan, Do, Check, Act: Policies and principles; planning; implementation and operation ; performance assessment. Within this framework, taking into account the structuring of standards - management responsibility/planning; resource management; product realization/operational control and measurement, analysis and improvement, on the matrix of the Table 4 we have shown the requirements of the ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and OHSAS 18001 (NP 4397:2008), as well as we have established correspondences, made them compatible with each other and associated with the phases of the PDCA methodology - “Plan-Do-Check-Act”. With this matrix, we aim to orientate and align the organizational structure of the company in the same direction, while at the same time creating a structured and useful work referential to support an effective alignment and correspondence of the Sub-Management Systems of Quality, Environment and Safety with consequent compatibilities between each other, for consequent implementation of the IMS-QES. From this matrix we can also, at the same time, to made a correspondence with the Deming Cycle, in this circumstance for the Integrated Management System, as well as a set of stages (1.1; 2.1...2.4; 3.1...3.7; 4.1...4.6 and 5.1) associated with each other these phases of the PDCA cycle, according to Figure 4.
The continuous improvement of the global performance of a Company shall be an objective always present in the development of the IMS [34]. The Company should therefore potentiate for each stage: Plan, Do, Check, Act, a careful and methodical analysis of the differences that effectively can be observed in terms of standards requirements under clauses equivalent involved and for each phase and each stage of development of the IMS-QES, according to the model of Figure 4 to ensure its compliance and evidence of it, in full conformity.
First of all, the definition, approval and communication of the Integrated Management Policy, a common requirement to the different normative references, which must take into account and be consistent with the Mission and Vision of the Company, these supported on a strategy and specific objectives which in turn, support the implementation of that policy and its consequent effectiveness.
The planning of activities in the aim of the Integrated Management System - Phase I (Plan) - is perhaps the most important [34]. In fact, a neglected planning will lead to inefficiencies that can be translated into potential deviations to the objectives. It is therefore fundamental to invest resources and expertise at this stage, via a thorough and careful work, in order to respond effectively to all requirements arising from the involved standards and others applicable requirements in this phase of the planning of the IMS [34].
Model of development of the IMS-QES [16 ; 34]
Following is the Implementation and Operation - "Do", the Company should, in this Phase II - Do - promote, the "Make / Do" in coherence with the pre-planned. Corresponds mainly to clauses: 7 - Product Realization, of ISO 9001 - and 4.4 - Implementation and operation of the NP 4397 and ISO 14001 and in the case of ISO 9001 should be considered associated with the product realization, other complementary clauses, particularly in context of resource allocation (6.1, 6.2, 6.3, 6.4) and management commitment (5.1, 5.5.1).
In the Phase III - Check, we identified six steps (4.1 to 4.6) designed to meet the requirements of clauses: 8 - Measurement, analysis and improvement of ISO 9001, 4.5 - Checking of the ISO 14001 and OHSAS 18001/NP 4397. With the exception of step 4.3 - Investigation of incidents resulting from a specific sub-section, the 4.5.3.1 - Incident investigation, the OHSAS 18001/NP 4397 has no correspondence in the ISO 9001 and ISO 14001.
At the end, in the Phase IV - Act, we identified the step 5.1 - Critical analysis and review of the Management System, which refers to the requirements of clauses: 5.6 - Management review of the ISO 9001 and 4.6 - Management review of the ISO 14001 and OHSAS 18001/NP 4397. The Management review process can be done in an integrated manner [34]. It requires, in itself, a very careful preparation face, particularly, to the level of various information that supports the inputs, as is schematized in Figure 5.
IMS-QES - Management Review - Standards, inputs and outputs [16 ; 34]
The continuous improvement of the global performance of organizations must be always a present goal in a perspective of sustainability [34]. The development Model of the integration of the Management System of Safety and Health at Work with the Quality Management Systems and Environmental Management at the Company should therefore to potentiate, for each phase: Plan, Do, Check, Act, a careful and methodical analysis of the differences that effectively are observed at the level of normative requirements under the equivalent clauses and for each step of their development as the advocated model of integration.
The compatibilization of the normative requirements supported by an analysis of similarities, of the normative referentials of Management Systems, which promotes the integration and it\'s formatting on a Matrix of compatibilization of the requirements and of support to the integration of the referential - NP EN ISO 9001:2008, OHSAS 18001:2007 / NP 4397:2008 and NP EN ISO14001:2004, establishing correspondences, matching them with each other and associate them, according to ISO Guide 72:2001, the following phases of the methodology PDCA - Plan, Do, Check, Act: Policy and principles; Planning, Implementation and Operation, Performance Evaluation, Improvement, Management Review, is one of the activities that in the aim and objectives of the integration model was given special attention in context of characterization and framework of the situation in the Company. That compatibilization constitutes, the starting point for subsequent activities of integration, simplification and optimization, to a level of the strictly necessary and consequent integration maximized as desired of the three sub-systems – the EMS, the QMS and the OHSMS in context of strong competitiveness [34].
As can be expected, there are several difficulties involved with implementing an Integrated Management System (IMS). However, Beckmerhgeni [35] points out that “the management systems implemented separately in an incompatible way results in costs, an increased probability of faults and errors, duplicated efforts, the creation of unnecessary bureaucracy and a negative impact near the Stakeholders, particularly Employees and Costumers”.
The integration of the Environmental System supported on the ISO 14001:2004 with the Management Systems of Quality - ISO 9001:2008 and Occupational, Health and Safety - OSAS 18001:2007 represent real added value both in the present and, fundamentally, for the future, not only for the Company, as well as for a whole range of Stakeholders.
Environmental management in organizations is therefore a fundamental process for an more and more integrated and responsible management of sustainability [34]. Aims essentially, an efficient resource management, consumption, wastes and effluents, the use of cleaner technologies and compliance with applicable environmental legal requirements for protecting and promoting environmental and pollution prevention.
An Environmental Management System (EMS) is translated in practice in a continuous cycle of planning, implementation and operation, checking, analyzing and improving of the actions that drives an organization to continuously improve their environmental performance, covering a wide range of issues, including those with strategic implications as well as of competitiveness. The ISO 14001:2004 [36] is integrated in a family of standards developed by the ISO in the fields of Environmental Management according to Table 5.
The ISO 14001:2004 describes the requirements that an EMS of an Organization must meet in order to help the Organization to manage the impact of their activities on the environment, bringing advantages that are considered of high relevance to the promotion of continuous improvement in environmental performance of the Organization and to the prevention of pollution, taking into account the socio-economic surroundings. It allows an organization to develop and implement a policy and objectives, taking into account legal requirements and other requirements that the organization subscribes, and information about significant environmental aspects which the organization can control and influence. While a reference for an EMS, the ISO 14001:2004 contains guidelines that enable their implementation and the requirements that can be objectively audited for certification.
Today, the success of an organization goes through Sustainability [34]. According to ISO 9004:2009 [37], the sustained success of an organization is considered the result of its ability to achieve and maintain their long-term objectives that pass unfulfilled, in a consistent way, the needs and expectations of its Stakeholders, in a balanced and long-term as well.
Furthermore the fact that, in turn, other normative references of Management Systems, namely the ISO 14001 and OHSAS 18001/4397 NP, are valuable auxiliaries in the evolutive management of Organizations and, hence, on the three strands of its Sustainability: the Economic, the Social and Environmental. In fact, today Quality, Environment, Safety and Occupational Health are fundamental pillars of the Sustainable Development and therefore should be considered at the level of the management activities and of strategic planning of Organizations that want to take a leadership role, at present, but fundamentally in the future.
SERIE | CONTENTS | STANDARDS |
ISO 14000 | Environmental Management Systems | ISO 14001:2004 – Environmental management systems – Requirements with guidance for use ISO 14004:2004 – Environmental management systems – General guidelines on principles, systems and supporting techniques ISO 14005:2010 – Environmental management Systems - Guidelines for the phased implementation of an environmental management system, including the use of environmental performance evaluation. ISO 14006:2011 – Environmental management Systems - Guidelines for incorporating ecodesign |
ISO 19011 | Audits to Management Systems | ISO 19011:2011, Guidelines for auditing management systems |
ISO 14020 | Environmental label | ISO 14020 - Environmental Labelling: General Principles ISO 14021 - Environmental Labels and Declarations: Self-Declaration Environmental Claims, Terms and Definitions ISO 14022 - Environmental Labels and Declarations: Self-Declaration Environmental Claims, Symbols ISO 14023 - Environmental Labels and Declarations: Self-Declaration Environmental Claims, Testing and Verification ISO 14024 - Environmental Labels and Declarations: Environmental Labelling Type I, Guiding Principles and Procedures |
ISO 14030 | Environmental performance evaluation | ISO 14031:1999 - Environmental management -- Environmental performance evaluation - Guidelines |
ISO 14040 | Life cycle assessment | ISO 14040:1997 - Environmental management -- Life cycle assessment -- Principles and framework ISO 14041:1998 - Environmental management -- Life cycle assessment -- Goal and scope definition and inventory analysis ISO 14042:2000 - Environmental management -- Life cycle assessment -- Life cycle impact assessment ISO 14043;2001 – Environmental management – Life cycle assessment – Life cycle interpretation |
ISO 14050 | Understanding of Terms and Definitions | ISO 14050:2002 – Environmental management – Vocabulary. |
ISO Standards in the fields of Environmental Management [34]
Q M S | 100% are certified by ISO 9001 | |||
Reasons for certification | Very Important | Empowering knowledge workers | Business benefits | |
Better Quality of the products | Improvement of company image | |||
Important | Pressure from customers | Community relations | ||
Benefits | Major Impact | Improvement of the company image | Ease of access to information | |
Internal organization of the company | Continuous assessment through internal audits | |||
Impact | Better productivity and profitability | Deadlines | ||
Cost reduction | Number of defects / complaints | |||
Competitive position | Satisfaction of internal and external customers. | |||
Little Impact | Absenteeism | Product innovation | ||
Tools | Most commonly used | Surveys | Charts (graphics) | |
Sheets of data collection | ||||
Less used | Scatter diagram | Cause and effect diagram | ||
Difficulties | High certification costs | Difficulties to change company\'s culture | ||
Difficulties to motivate personal | ||||
E M S | 36.9 % are certified by ISO 14001 | |||
Reasons for non-certification | Main reason | Lack of investment support | A form of marketing | |
Secondary reason | Benefits do not outweigh the costs | Investments are high | ||
Less Relevant | Environmental risks are low | |||
Reasons for certification | Very Important | Progress but always protect the environment | Raising public | |
Improved quality of life inside and outside the company | ||||
Important | Obtaining an asset in terms of marketing | |||
Benefits | Major Impact | Environmental protection | Rational use of natural resources | |
Business image in the community | Recycling | |||
Ensuring compliance | Prevention of environmental risks | |||
Impact | Clear, organized work environment | Waste generation | ||
Awareness of employees in environmental issues | ||||
No impact | Insurance costs | Costs of raw materials and equipment | ||
Ability to obtain financing at low interest rates | ||||
Drawbacks | Overall costs increased on the early stages of certification. | |||
Main Difficulties | High certification costs | Difficulties to change Company\'s culture | ||
Difficulties to motivate personal | ||||
O H S M S | 26.1 % are certified by OHSAS 18001 | |||
Reasons for non-certification | Main reason | Investments are high | Certification is seen as a cost and marketing | |
Secondary reason | Benefits do not outweigh the costs | |||
Less Relevant | Risk of accidents at work are low | |||
Reasons for certification | Very important | Eliminate or minimize risks to workers | ||
Important | Improving the organization with the reduction of accidents at work | |||
Less Important | Rate of absenteeism due to occupational diseases | |||
Benefits | Major Impact | Improvement of working conditions | Better internal communication | |
Improvement company image. | Ensuring compliance with legislation | |||
Impact | Less number of accidents | Reduction in cost of accidents and occupational diseases | ||
No impact | Dissemination in the media of data on safety and health of the company | |||
Drawbacks | No drawbacks have been referred | |||
Main Difficulties | High certification costs | Difficulties to change Company\'s culture | ||
Difficulties to motivate personal | Increase bureaucracy | |||
Management difficulties in the early stages of certification | ||||
IMS | Main Benefits | Management costs reduction | Unification of internal audits | |
Reduction of bureaucracy | Better definition of responsibilities and authority | |||
Easier compliance of legislation | Increased performance and efficiency | |||
Improved external image of the company | Better and easier communication system. | |||
Improved organization | Simplified management systems resulting in less confusion, redundancy and conflicts in documentation | |||
Increased employee training | Optimized resources(financial and humans) | |||
Drawbacks | One problem on a single system affects the overall management system | Initial costs increase associated to an increase in non-conformities; | ||
Initial higher organizational problems | Continuous update of every documentation with negative impact in the management activity itself | |||
Complex organizational system | Incompatible concepts between systems | |||
Main Difficulties | Long time to implement the integration process | Insufficient integrability of the standards | ||
Deep changes in the management system due to operational changes | Difficulties to implement systems integration | |||
High difficulty associated to training and changes in the organization methods and culture | Higher difficulty and cost to implement all systems simultaneously when compared with individual implementation |
Summary of the benefits and impact grade characterization that companies obtained with certification of the management systems (Adapted of [13])
Also in this context of Sustainability, the integration of the EMS whith others management systems is, nowadays, a strategic decision of the organizations, influential of its competitiveness and continuity in the Market, fostering a better and increasing satisfaction of all Stakeholders, increasing the image and brand reputation near them [34]. Are too examples of adavantages of the integration, also highlighted by the survey respondents: the elimination of conflicts between individual systems with optimization of Resources; the improvement at the level of the Coordinated and Integrated Management of the Risk associated to the Safety of the Persons and Company Assets, Environment and Quality of the Products; the reduction of the number of internal and/or external audits and audits to Suppliers and spent time versus associated costs; the creation of added value for the business through the prevention and/or elimination of several types of operational and organizational wastes.
The three standards ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and OHSAS 18001 have a common underlying principle: continuous improvement based on Deming`s Cycle (Plan-do-Check-Act) [16 ; 34]. According to Labodová [22], basically one PDCA approach governing the aspects of quality, environment and safety, consistent with clear priorities, shows hot spots in companies, makes it easy to focus procedures and responsibilities on important areas.
According to the survey, 100% of the companies of the sample had their QMS certified. 36.9 % of these companies had also their EMS certified, and only 26.% had OHSMS certification. In Table 6, a summary of the main benefits, classified according to their impact relevance, as well as the main reasons for the three certification systems is presented. Moreover, the main factors that justify the option for non-certification of EMS and OHSMS of the remaining companies are also presented. The main factors that justify the option for non-certification of QMS are not presented, since every company participating in the survey had their QMS certified. Are also presented the main benefits, drawbacks and difficulties what concern Integration of Management Systems.
The theoretical fundamentation was supported on the concepts of Quality Management Systems, Environment and Safety, Integrated Management Systems, orientations, guidelines and ISO standards as well as a group of other sources of knowledge, such as Integrated Management Systems QES.
Were identified the main benefits of implementing an EMS and it´s certification after receiving the QMS certification on Portuguese SMEs performance. In fact the main benefits that the Portuguese SMEs have gained from the referred certifications have been, among others, prevention of environmental risks, environment protection, improvement business image in the community, ensuring compliance with legislation and rational use of natural resources. In addition, the main reasons for non-certification were analyzed.
Those companies with non-certified EMS mentioned ”lack of investment support” and “consider the certification as a form of marketing”. Drawbacks that have been concluded were “overall costs increased on the early stages of certification”, because there is a better control. The main difficulties uncovered in relation to EMS certification can be pinpointed to difficulties in changing company culture, high certification costs, and difficulties to motivate personal. With respect to environment, there is still a lot to do in Portugal. Several Portuguese SMEs have already implemented the EMS and others will follow, mainly, because money can’t pay for an environmental disaster.
In terms of the potential benefits of the integration of the Environmental Management System (EMS) with the Quality Management System (QMS) and Occupational Health and Safety Management System OH&SMS and it´s certification, will be mostly a whole range of opportunities for performance improvements of the organization as a whole, and throughout it\'s supply chain such as: the elimination of conflicts between individual systems with resource optimization, creation of added value to the business by eliminating several types of wastes, reducing the number of internal and external audits, common policy management, greater valuation and motivation of Collaborators, among others.
The proposed model of IMS_QES has led to the simplification and consequent resolution of problems and gains in efficiency of existing management systems in the company (referred as Sub-systems), which along the years were adopted gradually, but individualized and often isolated between to each other.
All these benefits will enhance the competitiveness of the Companies and its differentiation by the positive in the face of competition, national and/or international.
The developed model of an Integrated Management Systems (IMS), generic, flexible, integrator, evolutionary and lean namely what concerns to Quality (ISO 9001), Environment (ISO 14001) and Health and Safety at work (OHSAS 18001/ NP 43397:2008), but too to others standards, such as, Risk Management (ISO 31000:2009), Social Accountability (SA 8000) and Information Security, among others, could be progressively more integrated and allow the Companies to even more capable, enhancing in this way too the development of the businesses and consequently their sustainable successes.
Audio signal processing is an important subfield of signal processing that is concerned with the electronic manipulation of audio signals [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. The problem of discriminating music from audio has increasingly become very important as automatic audio signal recognition (ASR) systems and it has been increasingly applied in the domain of real-world multimedia [7]. Human’s ear can easily distinguish audio without any influence of the mixed music [8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23]. Due to the new methods of the analysis and the synthesis processing of audio signals, the processing of musical signals has gained particular weight [16, 24], and therefore, the classical sound analysis methods may be used in the processing of musical signals [25, 26, 27, 28]. Many types of musical signals such as Rock music, Pop music, Classical music, Country music, Latin music, Arabic music, Disco and Jazz, Electronic music, etc. are existed [29]. The sound type signals hierarchy is shown in Figure 1 [30].
\nTypes of audio signals.
Audio signal changes randomly and continuously through time. As an example, music and audio signals have strong energy content in the low frequencies and weaker energy content in the high frequencies [31, 32]. Figure 2 depicts a generalized time and frequency spectra of audio signals [33]. The maximum frequency fmax\n varies according to type of audio signal, where, in the telephone transmission fmax\n is equal to 4 kHz, 5 kHz in mono-loudspeaker recording, 6 KHz in multi-loudspeaker recording or stereo, 11 kHz in FM broadcasting, however, it equals to 22 KHz in the CD recording.
\nGeneralized frequency spectrum for audio signal [33].
Acoustically speaking, the audio signals can be classified into the following classes:
Single talker in specific time [38].
Singing without music.
Mixture of background music and single talker audio.
Songs that are a mixture of music with a singer voice.
May completely be music signal without any audio component.
Complex sound mixture like multi-singers or multi-speakers with multi-music sources.
Non-music and non-audio signals: like fan, motor, car, jet sounds, etc.
Audio signal that is a mixture of more than one speakers talking simultaneously at the same time [8].
Abnormal music can be single word cadence, human whistle sound, or opposite reverberation [4, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38].
The letters symbols used for writing are not adequate, as the way they are pronounced varies; for example, the letter “o” in English, is pronounced differently in words “pot” most“ and “one”. It is almost impossible to tackle the audio classification problem without first establishing some way of representing the spoken utterances by some group of symbols representing the sounds produced [39, 40, 41, 42, 43]. The phonemes in Table 1 are divided into groups based on the way they are produced [44], forming a set of allophones [45]. In some tonal languages, such as Vietnamese and Mandarin, the intonation determines the meaning of each word [46, 47, 48].
\nVowels | \nDiphthongs | \nFricatives | \nPlosives | \nSemivowels | \nNasals | \nAffricates | \n
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
heed | \nbay | \nsail | \nbat | \nwas | \nam | \njaw | \n
hid | \nby | \nship | \ndisc | \nran | \nan | \nchore | \n
head | \nbow | \nfunnel | \nGoat | \nlot | \nsang | \n\n |
had | \nbough | \nthick | \npool | \nyacht | \n\n | \n |
hard | \nbeer | \nhull | \ntap | \n\n | \n | \n |
hod | \ndoer | \nzoo | \nkite | \n\n | \n | \n |
hoard | \nboar | \nazure | \n\n | \n | \n | \n |
hood | \nboy | \nthat | \n\n | \n | \n | \n |
who’d | \nbear | \nvalve | \n\n | \n | \n | \n |
hut | \n\n | \n | \n | \n | \n | \n |
heard | \n\n | \n | \n | \n | \n | \n |
the | \n\n | \n | \n | \n | \n | \n |
Phoneme categories of British English and examples of words in which they are used [44].
Since the range of sounds that can be produced by any system is limited [39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44], the pressure in the lungs is increased by the reverse process. They push the air up the trachea; the larynx is situated at the top of the trachea. By changing the shape of the vocal tract, different sounds are produced, so the fundamental frequency will be changing with time. The spectrogram (or sonogram) for the sentence “What can I have for dinner tonight?” is shown in Figure 3.
\nA sonogram for the sentence “What can I have for dinner tonight?” [43].
The way that humans recognize and interpret audio signal has been considered by many researchers [1, 25, 39]. To produce a complete set of English vowels, many researchers have depicted that the two lowest formants are necessary, as well as that the three lowest formants in frequency are necessary for good audio intelligibility. As the number of formants increased, sounds that are more natural are produced. However, when we deal with continues audio, the problem becomes more complex. The history of audio signal identification can be found in [1, 25, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48].
\nThere are two kinds of tone structures in music signal. The first one is a simple tone formed of single sinusoidal waveform, however, the second one is a more complex tone consisting of more than one harmonic [31, 49, 50, 51, 52]. The spectrum of music signal has twice the bandwidth of audio spectrum, and most of the power of audio signal is concentrated at lower frequencies. Melodists and musicians divide musical minor to eight parts and each part named octave, where each octave is divided into seven parts called tones [30]. For different instrument, a tempered scale is shown in Table 2. These tones, shown in Table2, are named (Do, Re, Me, Fa, So, La and Se) or simply (A, B, C, D, E, F, and G). The tone (A1) at the first octave has the fundamental frequency of the first tone in each octave, i.e., every first tone in each octave takes the reduplicate frequency of the first tone of previous one, (i.e., An = 2\nn\nA1 or Bn = 2\nn\n B1 and so on where n ∈ {2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7}.
\nA Hz | \nB Hz | \nC Hz | \nD Hz | \nE Hz | \nF Hz | \nG Hz | \n
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
A1 27.5 | \nB1 30.863 | \nC1 32.703 | \nD1 36.708 | \nE1 41.203 | \nF1 43.654 | \nG1 48.99 | \n
A2 55 | \nB2 61.735 | \nC2 65.406 | \nD2 73.416 | \nE2 82.407 | \nF2 87.307 | \nG2 97.99 | \n
A3 110 | \nB3 123.47 | \nC3 130.81 | \nD3 146.83 | \nE3 164.81 | \nF3 174.61 | \nG3 196 | \n
A4 220 | \nB4 246.94 | \nC4 261.63 | \nD4 293.66 | \nE4 329.63 | \nF4 349.23 | \nG4 392 | \n
A5 440 | \nB5 493.88 | \nC5 523.25 | \nD5 587.33 | \nE5 659.26 | \nF5 698.46 | \nG5 783.9 | \n
A6 880 | \nB6 987.77 | \nC6 1046.5 | \nD6 1174.7 | \nE6 1318.5 | \nF6 1396.9 | \nG6 1568 | \n
A7 176 | \nB7 1975.5 | \nC7 2093 | \nD7 2349.3 | \nE7 2637 | \nF7 2793 | \nG7 3136 | \n
A8 352 | \nB8 3951.1 | \nC8 4186 | \n\n | \n | \n | \n |
Frequencies of notes in the tempered scale [3].
From Table 2, the highest tone C8 occurs at the frequency of 4186 Hz, which is the highest frequency produced by human sound system, which leads musical instrument manufactures to try their best to bound music frequency to human’s sound system limits to achieve strong concord [34, 53, 54]. In the real world, musical instruments cover more frequencies than audible band, which is limited to 20 kHz).
\nThe concept of tone quality that is most common depends on the subjective acoustic properties, regardless of partials or formants and the production of music depends mainly on the kind of musical instruments [53, 54]. These instruments can be summarized as follows:
The string musical instrument. Its tones is produced by vibrating chords made from horsetail hair, or other manufactured material like copper or plastic. Every vibrating chord has its own fundamental frequency, producing complex tones so that it covers most of the audible bands. Figure 4 shows string instruments.
The brass musical instrument. The Brass musical instrument depends on blowing air like woodwind. Its shape looks like an animal horn and has manual valves to control cavity size. Brass musical instrument has huge number of nonharmonic signals existed in its spectrum. Figure 5 shows brass instruments.
The woodwind musical instrument. Woodwind instrument consists of an open cylindrical tube at both ends. Some woodwind instruments may use small-vibrated piece of copper to produce tones. It produces many numbers of harmonic tones. Figure 6 shows woodwind instruments.
The percussion musical instrument. Examples of percussion instruments are piano, snare drum, chimes, marimba, timpani, and xylophone. Most of the power of tones in percussion instruments produces non-harmonic components. Figure 7 shows some percussion instruments.
The electronic musical instrument. The most qualified robust and accurate electronic musical instrument is the organ. It has a large keyboard, a memory that can store notes and use their frequencies as basic cadences or tones. Without organ help, disco, pop, rock and jazz cannot stand [29, 34, 35, 36, 37]. Organ is not the only electronic musical producer. If the electronic musical instruments are used for producing music, the tone quality measure of the fundamental frequency or harmonics is not needed. Figure 8 shows an example of organ electronic instrument.
String instruments.
Brass instruments.
Woodwind instruments.
Percussion instruments.
Electronic organ.
The audio signal is a slowly time varying signal in the sense that, when examined over a sufficiently short period of time “between 5 and l00 msec. Therefore, its characteristics are stationary within this period of time. A simple example of an audio signal is shown in Figure 9.
\nAn example of audio signal of specking the two-second long phrase “Very good night”: (a) time domain (b) magnitude. (c) Phase.
\nFigure 10 is a typical example of music portion. It is very clear from the two spectrums in Figures 9 and 10 that we can distinguish between the two types of signals.
\nA 2-second long music signal: (a) time domain. (b) Spectrum. (c) Phase.
\nFigures 11 and 12 depict the evolutionary spectrum of two different types of signals, audio and music.
\nThe spectrum of an average of 500 specimens: (a) audio, (b) music.
Evolutionary spectrum of an average of 500 specimens: (a) audio, (b) music.
Now, let us discuss some of the main similarity and differences between the two types of signals.
\nTonality. By tone, we mean a single harmonic of a pure periodical sinusoid. Regardless of the type of instruments or music, the musical signal is composed of a multiple of tones; however, this is not the case in the voice signal [47, 52, 55, 56, 57].
\nBandwidth. Normally, the audio signal has 90% of its power concentrated within frequencies lower than 4 kHz and limited to 8 kHz; however, music signal can extend its power to the upper limits of the ear’s response, which is 20 kHz [52, 58].
\nAlternative sequence. Audio exhibits an alternating sequence of noise-like segment while music alternates in more tonal shape. In other words, audio signal is distributed through its spectrum more randomly than music does.
\nPower distribution. Normally, the power distribution of an audio signal is concentrated at frequencies lower than 4 kHz, and then collapsed rapidly above this frequency. On the other hand, there is no specific shape of the power of music spectrum [59].
\nDominant frequency. For a single talker, his dominant frequency can accurately be determined uniquely, however, in a single musical instrument only the average dominant frequency can be determined. In multiple musical instruments, the case will be worst.
\nFundamental frequency. For a single talker, his fundamental frequency can be accurately configured. However, this is not the case for a single music instrument.
\nExcitation patterns. The excitation signals (pitch) for audio are usually existed only over a span of three octaves, while the fundamental music tones can span up to six octaves [60].
\nEnergy sequences. A reasonable generalization is that audio follows a pattern of high-energy conditions of voicing followed by low energy conditions, which the envelope of music is less likely to exhibit.
\nTonal duration. The duration of vowels in audio is very regular, following the syllabic rate. Music exhibits a wider variation in tone lengths, not being constrained by the process of articulation. Hence, tonal duration would likely be a good discriminator.
\nConsonants. Audio signal contains too many consonants while music is usually continuous through the time [33].
\nZero crossing rate (ZCR). The ZCR in music is greater than that in audio. We can use this idea to design a discriminator [60].
\nIn the frequency domain, there is a strong overlapping between audio and music signals, so no ordinary filter can separate them. As mentioned before, audio signal may cover spectrum between 0 and 4 kHz with a dominant frequency of an average = 1.8747 kHz. However, the lowest fundamental frequency (A1) of a music signal is about 27.5 Hz and the highest frequency of the tone C8 is around 4186 Hz. The reason behind this is that musical instrument manufacturers try to bound music frequency to human’s sound limits in order to achieve a strong consonant and a strong frequency overlap. Moreover, music may propagate over the audible spectrum to cover more than the audible band of 20 kHz, with a dominant frequency of an average = 1.9271 kHz [25].
\n\nTable 3 summarizes the main similarity and differences between music and audio signals.
\nKey Difference | \nAudio | \nMusic | \n
---|---|---|
Units of Analysis | \nPhonemes | \nNotes Finite | \n
Temporal Structure | \n\n
| \n\n
| \n
Spectral Structure | \n\n
| \n\n
| \n
Syntactic /Semantic Structure | \n\n
| \n\n
| \n
The main differences between audio and music signals.
The main classification approaches will be discussed in this section. They can be categorized into three different approaches: (1) time domain approaches, (2) frequency domain approaches, and (3) time-frequency domain approaches. A two-level music and audio classifier was developed by El-Maleh [61, 62]. He used a combination of long-term features such as the variance, the differential parameters, the zero crossing rate (ZCR), and the time-averages of spectral parameters. Saunders [60] proposed another two-level classifier. His approach was based on the short-time energy (STE) and the average ZCR features. In addition, Matityaho and Furst [63] have developed a neural network based model for classifying music signals. Their model was designed based on human cochlea functional performance.
\nFor audio detection, Hoyt and Wecheler [64] have developed a neural network base model using Fourier transform, Hamming filtering, and a logarithmic function as pre-processing then they applied a simple threshold algorithm for detecting audio, music, wind, traffic or any interfering sound. In addition, to improve the performance, they suggested wavelet transform feature for pre-processing. Their work is much similar to the work done by Matityaho and Furst’s [63, 64]. 13 features were examined by Scheirer and Slaney [65]. Some of these features were simple modification of each other’s. They also tried combining them in several multidimensional classification forms. From these previous works, the most powerful discrimination features were the STE and the ZCR. Therefore, the STE and the ZCR will be discussed thoroughly. Finally, the common classifiers of the audio and the music signals can be divided into the following approaches:
The Time domain algorithms:
The ZCR algorithm [1, 38, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 136]:
The standard deviation of first order difference of the ZCR.
The 3rd central moment of the mean of ZCR.
The total number of zero crossings exceeding a specific threshold.
The ANN (Artificial neural networks) [12, 49, 58, 63, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108].
The Frequency-domain algorithms [32, 33, 34, 59, 100, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 136]:
The Spectral Centroid.
The Spectral Flux Variance.
The Spectral Centroid Mean and Variance.
The Spectral Flux Mean and Variance.
The Spectrum Roll-Off.
The Signal Bandwidth.
The Spectrum Amplitude.
The Delta Amplitude.
The Cepstrum [110]:
\nThe Time-Frequency domain algorithms:
\nThe ZCR algorithm can be defined as the number of crossing the signal the zero axis within a specific window. It is widely used because its simplicity and robustness [38]. We may define the ZCR as in the following equation.
\nwhere Zn\n is the ZCR, N is the number of samples in one window, and sgn is the sign of the signal such that sgn [x(n)] = 1 when x(n) > 0, sgn [x(n)] = −1, when x(n) < 0. An essential not is that the sampling rate must be high enough to catch any crossing through zero. Another important note before evaluating the ZCR is to normalize the signal by subtracting its average value. It is clear from Eq. (1) that the value of the ZCR is proportional to the sign change in the signal, i.e., the dominant frequency of x(n). Therefore, we may find that the ZCR of music is, in general, higher than that of audio, but not sure at the unvoiced audio.
\nProperties of ZCR:
\nThe ZCR properties can be summarized as follow.
The Principle of Dominant Frequency
The dominant frequency of a pure sinusoid is the only value in the spectrum. This value of frequency is equal to the ZCR of the signal in one period. If we have a non-sinusoidal periodic signal, its dominant frequency is frequency with the largest amplitude. The dominant frequency (ω\n0) can be evaluated as follow.
where N is the number of intervals, E{.} is the expected value, and Do\n is the ZCR per interval.
The Highest frequency
Since D0\n denotes the ZCR of a discrete-time signal Z(i), let us assume that Dn\n denotes the ZCR of the nth\n derivative of Z(i), i.e., D\n1 is the ZCR of the first derivative of Z(i), D\n2 is the ZCR of the second derivative of Z(i), and so on. Then, the highest frequency ωmax\n in the signal can be evaluated as follow.
where N is the number of samples. If the sampling rate equals 11 KHz, then the change in ωmax\n can be ignored for i > 10.
The Lowest frequency
Assuming that the time period between any two samples is normalized to unity, the derivative∇ of Z(i) can be defined as Z(i) = Z(i) – Z(i–1). Then, the ZCR of the nth derivative of Z(i) is defined as Dn. Now, let us define ∇ + as the +ve derivative of Z(i), then ∇ + [Z(i)] can be defined as follow.
Now, let us define the ZCR of the nth + ve derivative of Z(i) by the symbol \nnD. Then we can find the lowest frequency ωmin\n of a signal as follow.
Measure of Periodicity
A signal is said to be purely periodic if and only if.
Using Eq. (6), it was found that music is more periodic or than audio [44, 45, 46, 47, 55, 56, 57, 118].\n
The Ratio of High ZCR (RHZCR)
\nIt was found that the variation of the ZCR is more discriminative than the exact ZCR, so the RHZCR can be considered as one feature [66]. The RHZCR is defined as the ratio of the number of frames whose ZCR are above 1 over the average ZCR in one-window, and can be defined as follow.
\nwhere N is the number of frames per one-window, n is the index of the frame, sgn[.] is a sign function and ZCR(n) is the zero-crossing rate at the n\nth frame. In general, audio signals consist of alternating voiced and unvoiced sounds in each syllable rate, while music does not have this kind of alternation. Therefore, from Eq. (7) and Eq. (8), we may observe that the variation of the ZCR (or the RHZCR) in an audio signal is greater than that of a music, as shown in Figure 13.
\nMusic and audio sharing some values [65].
The amplitude of the audio signal varies appreciably with time. In particular, the amplitude of unvoiced segments is generally much lower than the amplitude of voiced segments. The STE of the audio signal provides a convenient representation that reflects these amplitude variations. Unlike the audio signal, since the music signal does not contain unvoiced segments, the STE of the music signal is usually bigger than that of audio [60]. The STE of a discrete-time signal s(n) can define as.
\nwhere STEs in Eq. (9) is the total energy of the signal. The average power of s(n) is defined as.
\nSignals can be classified into three types, in general: an energy signal, which has a non-zero and finite energy, a power signal, which has a non-zero and finite energy, and the third type is neither energy nor power signal, see Table 4. Now, let us define another sequence {f(n;m)} as follow.
\nEnergy Signal 0 < Es\n < ∞ | \nTransient | \n\nS(n) = αnu(n) |α| < 1 | \n
Finite Sequence | \n\neβt\n[u(n)-u(n-255)] |β| < ∞\n | \n|
Power Signal 0 < Ps\n < ∞ | \nConstant | \n\ns(n) = α -∞ < α < ∞\n | \n
Periodic | \n\ns(n) = α sin(nωo + φ) -∞ < α < ∞\n | \n|
Stochastic | \n\nS(n) = rand (seed) | \n|
Neither Energy nor Power Signal | \nZero | \n\ns(n) = 0 | \n
Blow up | \n\ns(n) = αn u(n) |α| > 1 | \n
Types of signals.
where w(n) is just a window with a length of N with a value of zero outside [0, N-1]. Therefore, fs\n(n,m) will be zero outside [m-N + 1, m].
\nDeriving short term features
\nThe silence and unvoiced period in audios can be considered a stochastic background noise. Now, let us define F\n\ns\n as a feature of {s(n)}, mapping its values of the Hilbert space, H, to a set of complex numbers C such that.
\nThe long-term feature of {s(n)} may be defined as follow.
\nThe long-term average, when applied to energy signals, will have zero values, however, it is appropriate for power signals. Eq. (13) can be re-written as follow.
\nResulting a family of mappings. If each member of the family is selected to be a λ, the we can use the notation Fs\n(λ). The discrete-time Fourier transforms is an example of a parametric long-term feature. The long-term feature can be of the form.
\nwhere M in Eq. (15) is the mapping sequence. It maps {s(n)} to another sequence. The long-term feature Fs(λ) is defined as LoM, a composition of function L and M. If Fs\n(λ) is the long-term feature of Eq. (12), then the short-term feature Fs(λ,m) of time period m can be constructed as follows:
Define a frame as in Eq. (11).
Apply the long-term feature transformation to the frame sequence as in Eq. (16).
Low Short Time Energy Ratio (LSTER)
\nAs done in the ZCR, the variation is selected [33]. Here, the LSTER is used to represent the variation of the STE. LSTER is defined as the ratio of the number of frames whose STE are less than 0.5 times of the average STE in a one-second window, as in Eq. (17).
\nwhere.
\n\nN is the total number of frames, STE(n) is the STE at the n\nth frame, and STE\nav\n in Eq. (18) is the average STE in a one-window.
\n\nFigure 14 shows the preprocessing flow on Z(i) using the positive derivation concept (∇+), which provided some improvement in the discrimination process [66].
\nThe preprocessing using the +ve derivative before evaluating the ZCR.
This pre-processing increased the ZCR of music and reduced the ZCR of the audio with the expenses of some delay. The averages of the ZCR in speech, mixture, and music are shown in Figure 15, after applying the +ve derivative of order 50.
\nThe average ZCR of speech, mixture, and music, after pre-processing with the +ve derivative [66].
The ANN approach is a multipurpose technique that was used for implementing many algorithms [14, 35, 63, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 98, 113], especially in classification issues [16, 49, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 107, 108, 119, 120]. A multi-layer ANN approach was used in many classification tools since it can represent nonlinear decision support systems.
\nThis feature characterizes the change in the shape of the spectrum so it measures frame-to-frame spectral difference. Audio signals go through less frame-to-frame changes than music. The spectral flux values in audio signal is lower than that of music.
\nThe spectral flux, sometimes called the delta spectrum magnitude, is defined as the second norm of the spectral amplitude of the difference vector and defined as in Eq. (19).
\nwhere X(k) is the signal power and k is the corresponding frequency. Another definition of the SF is also described as follow.
\nwhere A(n, k) in Eq. (20) is the discrete Fourier transform (DFT) of the n\nth frame of the input signal and can be described as in Eq. (21).
\nand x(m) is the original audio data, L is the window length, M is the order of the DFT, N is the total number of frames, δ is an arbitrary constant, and w(m) is the window function. Scheirer and Slaney [65] has found that SF feature is very useful in discriminating audio from music. Figure 16 depicts that the variances are lower for music than for audio, and the means are less for audio than for music signal. Rossignol and others [109] have computed the means and variances of a one-second segment using frames of length 18 milliseconds.
\n3D histogram normalized features (the mean and the variance of spectral flux) of: (a) music signal, (b) audio signal [109].
Rossignol and others [109] have tested three classification approaches to classify the segments. They used the k-nearest-neighbors (kNN) with k = seven, the Gaussian mixture model (GMM), and the ANN classifiers. Table 5 shows their results are shown in Table 5, using the mean and the variance of the SF.
\n\n | Training | \nTesting | \nCross-validation | \n
---|---|---|---|
GMM | \n8.0% | \n8.1% | \n8.2% | \n
kNN | \nX | \n6.0% | \n8.9% | \n
ANN | \n6.7% | \n6.9% | \n11.6% | \n
Percentage of misclassified segments [109].
In the frequency domain, the mean and variance of the spectral centroid feature describes the center of frequency at which most of the power in the signal is found. In audio signals, the pitches of the signals are concentrated in narrow range of low frequencies. In contrast, music signals have higher frequencies that result higher spectral means, i.e., higher spectral centroids. For a frame at time t, the spectral centroid can be evaluated as follows.
\nwhere X(k) is the power of the signal at the corresponding frequency band k. When the mean and the variance of the SP are combined with the mean and the variance of the SC in Eq. (22), and the mean and the variance of the ZCR, the results of Table 6 are found.
\n\n | Training | \nTesting | \nCross-validation | \n
---|---|---|---|
GMM | \n7.9% | \n7.3% | \n22.9% | \n
kNN | \nX | \n2.2% | \n5.8% | \n
ANN | \n4.7% | \n4.6% | \n9.1% | \n
Percentage of misclassified segments [109].
Audio signal has an energy peak centered on the 4 Hz syllabic rate. Therefore, a 2nd order band pass filter is used, with center frequency of 4 Hz. Although audio signals have higher energy at that 4 Hz, some music bass instruments was found to have modulation energy around this frequency [65, 109].
\nIn the frequency domain, the roll-off point feature is the value of the frequency that has 95% of the power of the signal. The value of the roll-off point can be found as follow [65, 109].
\nwhere the left hand side of Eq. (23) is the sum of the power at the frequency value V, and the right hand side of Eq. (23) is the 95% of the total power of the signal of the frame, and X(k) is the DFT of x(t).
\nThe cepstrum of a signal can be defined as the inverse of the DFT of the logarithm of the spectrum of a signal. Music signals have higher cepstrum values than that of speech ones. The complex cepstrum is defined in the following Equation [110, 111, 112].
\nand then.
\nwhere X(ejω\n) is the DFT of the sequence x(n).
\n\nTable 7 summarizes the percentage error of a simulation done per each feature. Latency refers to the amount of past input data required to calculate the feature.
\nFeatures | \nThe 4 Hz Mod Energy | \nThe Low Energy | \nThe Roll off | \nThe Roll off Var | \nSpec Centroid | \nSpec Centroid Var | \nThe Spec Flux | \nSpec Flux Var | \nThe ZCR | \nThe Var of the ZC Rate | \nThe Cepstrum Resid | \nCepstrum Res Var | \nThe Pulse Metric | \n
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Latencies | \n1 sec | \n1 sec | \n1 frame | \n1 sec | \n1 frame | \n1 sec | \n1 frame | \n1 sec | \n1 frame | \n1 sec | \n1 frame | \n1 sec | \n5 sec | \n
Errors | \n12 +/−1.7% | \n14 +/−3.6% | \n46 +/− 2.9% | \n20 +/− 6.4% | \n39 +/− 8.0% | \n14 +/− 3.7% | \n39 +/− 1.1% | \n5.9 +/− 1.9% | \n38 +/− 4.6% | \n18 +/− 4.8% | \n37 +/− 7.5% | \n22 +/− %5.7 | \n18 +/− %2.9 | \n
Latency and univariate discrimination performance for each feature [65].
Scheirer and Slaney [65] have evaluated their models using 20 minutes long data sets of music and audio. Their data set consists of 80 samples, each with 15-second-long audio. They collected their samples using a 16-bit monophonic FM tuner with a sampling rate of 22.05 kHz, from a variety of stations, with different content styles and different noise levels, over a period of three days in the San Francisco Bay Area. They also claimed that they have audios from both male and female.
\nThey also recorded samples of many types of music, like pop, jazz, salsa, country, classical, reggae, various sorts of rock, various non-Western styles [29, 65]. They also used several features in a spatial partitioning classifier. Table 8 summarizes their results.
\nSubset | \nAll features | \nBest 8 | \nBest 3 | \nVS Flux only | \nFast 5 | \n
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Audio % Error | \n5.8 +/− 2.1 | \n6.2 +/− 2.2 | \n6.7 +/− 1.9 | \n12 +/− 2.2 | \n33 +/− 4.7 | \n
Music % Error | \n7.8 +/− 6.4 | \n7.3 +/− 6.1 | \n4.9 +/− 3.7 | \n15 +/− 6.4 | \n21 +/− 6.6 | \n
Total % Error | \n6.8 +/− 3.5 | \n6.7 +/− 3.3 | \n5.8 +/− 2.1 | \n13 +/− 3.5 | \n27 +/− 4.6 | \n
Performance for various subsets of features.
The features used in Best 8 are the plus the 4 Hz modulation, the variance features, the pulse metric, and the low-energy frame [67, 121]. In the Best 3, they used the pulse metric, the 4 Hz energy, and the variance of spectral flux. In the Fast 5, they used the 5 basic features. From results shown in Table 8, we conclude that it is not necessary to use all features in order to have a good classification, so in real time a good performance system may be found using only few features. A more detailed discussion can be found in [29, 65, 67, 121].
\nThe spectrogram is an example of time-frequency distribution and this method was found to be a good classical tool for analyzing audio signal [13, 19, 74, 115]. The spectrogram (or sonogram) of a signal x(n) can be defined as follow.
\nwhere N is the length of the sequence x(n), and W(n) is a specific window.
\nThe method of spectrogram can be used in discriminating audio from music signal, however, it may have a high percentage error. That is because it depends on the strength of the frequency in the tested samples. Figure 17 depicts two examples of spectrograms of audio and music signals.
\n(a) Audio spectrogram, (b) music Spectrum.
The spectral representation of a stationary signal may be viewed as an infinite sum of sinusoids with random amplitudes and phases as described in Eq. (27).
\nwhere Z(ω) is the process with orthogonal increments i.e.
\nand\n
where h(n,m) is defined as the unit impulse response of an LTV system. Substituting e(n) into x(n) of Eq. (29) (assuming S(ω) = 1 for white noise) we get.
\nwhere H(n,ω) in Eq. (30) is the time-frequency transfer function of the LTV system defined as
\nand the instantaneous power of x(n) is given by
\nand then, the Wold-Cramer ES is defined as
\nThe ES S(n,ω) in Eq. (33) was found to be a good classifier for the distinction of audio from music signals [68, 117]. Because of the extensive math calculation of the time-frequency spectrum, they may be very useful in off-line classification and analysis. The ESs of music and audio signals are shown in Figure 18(a) and (b), respectively. The suppression of the amplitude for audio might due to gaussianity.
\n(a) The ES of a music signal, (b) the ES of an audio signal [68].
Since the separation of audio and music signals is more complicated than classification, in this section we will introduce only two approaches [7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 22, 74, 134, 135, 136]. The first approach is the approach of independent component analysis (ICA) with ANN. The second classifier is the pitch cancelation approach. A block diagram of a classifier integrated with a separator is depicted in Figure 19.
\nA block diagram of a classifier integrated with a separator.
In [13, 20, 21, 115, 122], Wang and Brown proposed a model for audio segregation algorithm. His model consists of preprocessing using cochlear filtering, gammatone filtering, and correlogram forming autocorrelation function and feature extraction. The impulse response of the gammatone filters is represented as.
\nwhere n is the filter order, N is the number of channels, and U is the unit step function. Therefore, the gammatone system can be considered as a causal, time invariant system with an infinite response time. For the i\nth channel, fi is the center frequency of the channel, ϕi is the phase of the channel, b is the rate of decay of the impulse response and g(i) is an equalizing gain adjust for each filter. Figure 20 depicts the impulse response of the gammatone system, where Figure21 depicts the block diagram of the Wang and Brown model.
\n4th order impulse response Gammatone system: (a) In time domain when i = 1, fi = 80 Hz. (b) In time domain when i = 5, fi = 244 Hz. (c) In the frequency domain for the 1st five filters (i.e i = 1 to i = 5) with gain g(i) set to unity.
A block diagram of Wang and Brown model.
Wang and Brown model has some drawbacks. The first drawback is its complexity. Their model needs a high specification hardware to perform the calculations. In [20], Andre reported that Wang and Brown model needs to be improved. The ICA method can be used for separation if two sources of mixture are available assuming that the two signals from the two different sources are statistically independent [123, 124, 132, 133, 137]. In [19], Takigawa tried to improve the performance of W & B model. He used the short time Fourier transform (STFT) in the input stage and used the spectrogram values instead of correlogram, however, they have not reported the amount of improvement. A similar work for separating the voiced audio of two talkers speaking simultaneously at similar intensities in a single channel, using pitch peak canceling in cepstrum domain, was done by Stubbs [8].
\nThe pitch cancelation method is widely used in noise reduction. A good try to separate two talkers speaking simultaneously at similar intensities in a single channel, or by other words, separation of two talkers without any restriction was introduced by Stubbs [8]. For a certain person, the letters A and R have lot of consonant. These consonants, in the frequency domain, have low amplitudes, however, they appear as long pitch peak in the cepstrum domain. If these consonants are deleted by replacing the five-cepstral samples centered at the pitch peak by zeros, the audio segment may be attenuated or distorted completely. A typical example of the cepstrum of two audio and music signals is depicted in Figure 22 for 5 seconds signals. The logarithmic effect will increase low amplitude reduce high one, and the values near zero will be very large after the logarithm.
\n(a) A typical 5 seconds audio signal in cepstrum domain, the pitch peak appears near zero. (b) a typical 5 seconds music signal in cepstrum domain.
In this chapter, a general review of the common classification and separation algorithms used for speech and music was presented and some were introduced and discussed thoroughly. The approaches dealt with classification were divided into three categories. The first category included most of the real-time approaches. In the real-time approaches, we introduced the ZCR, the STE, the ZCR and the STE with positive derivative, with some of their modified versions, and the neural networks. The second category included most of the frequency domain approaches such as the spectral centroid and its variance, the spectral flux and its variance, the roll-off of the spectrum, the cepstral residual, and the delta pitch. However, the last category introduced two time-frequency approaches, mainly the spectrogram and the evolutionary spectrum. It has been noticed that the time-frequency classifiers provided an excellent and a robust discrimination result in discriminating speech from music signals in digital audio. Depending on the application, the decision of which feature should be chosen is selected. The algorithms of the first category are faster since the processing is made in the real time; however, those of the second one are more precise. The time-frequency approaches has not been discussed thoroughly in literature and they still need more research and elaboration. Lastly, we may conclude that many classification algorithms were proposed in literature, however, few ones were proposed for separation. The algorithms introduced in this chapter can be summarized in Table 9.
\nApproaches | \nTime domain | \nFrequency domain (Spectrum) | (Cepstrum) | \nTime-Frequency domain | \n|
---|---|---|---|---|
Algorithms | \nZCR | \nSpectral Centroid | \nCepstral Residual | \nSpectrogram (Sonogram) | \n
STE | \nSpectral Flux | \nVariance of the Cepstral Residual | \nEvolutionary Spectrum | \n|
Roll-Off Variance | \nSpectrum Roll-Off | \nCepstral feature | \nEvolutionary Bispectrum | \n|
Pulse Metric | \nSignal Bandwidth | \nPitch | \n\n | |
Number of Silence | \nSpectrum Amplitude | \nDelta Pitch | \n\n | |
HMM | \nDelta Amplitude | \n\n | \n | |
ANN | \n\n | \n | \n |
Summary of the classification and separation algorithms.
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