Automatic detection of microphone handling noise

Microphone handling noise is a common problem with user-generated content. It can occur when the operator inadvertently knocks or brushes a recording device. Handling noise may be impulsive, where a microphone is knocked, or a more sustained rubbing noise, when the microphone is brushed against something. A detector able to accurately detect handling noises caused by rubbing while recording speech, music or quotidian sounds has been developed. Ensembles of decision trees were trained to classify handling noise level over 23 ms frames; a second ensemble flags frames when the noise may be masked by foreground audio. Aggregation of the detection over 1 s yielded a Matthews correlation coefficient of 0.91.