Detect specific sound in audio

Question

I have a short (~1 second) arbitrary sound file and two devices. At some unknown time, device 1 will play the sound file out of its speaker. Device 2 should then be able to detect that sound. There may be background noise. It's unknown how loud the sound will be played.

This feels like it should be a common solved problem, but searching for answers has left me with nothing.

If anyone has good a solution or could just point me in the right direction I'd be very grateful.

Answer 1

In most distance measurement and room impulse response measurement cases researches use Maximum length sequence (MLS) or sine sweep signals. These signals are played back and recorded. The recorded audio is used along with the inverted original signal to identify the presence of the played back audio. These MLS and sine sweep signals are very robust even in noisy environment. Each of them have their own advantages.

A similar method of playing back sound in a device and hearing it from another device is done by the microsoft guys to measure the distance between the devices- http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/BeepBeep/

You can play around with the MLS sequence using this MATLAB package http://www.commsp.ee.ic.ac.uk/~mrt102/projects/mls.html