Comparison of Classical and Sequential Design of Experiments in Note Onset Detection

Design of experiments is an established approach to parameter optimization of industrial processes. In many computer applications however it is usual to optimize the parameters via genetic algorithms. The main idea of this work is to apply design of experiment’s techniques to the optimization of computer processes. The major problem here is finding a compromise between model validity and costs, which increase with the number of experiments. The second relevant problem is choosing an appropriate model, which describes the relationship between parameters and target values. One of the recent approaches here is model combination, which can be used in sequential designs in order to improve automatic prediction of the next trial point. In this paper a musical note onset detection algorithm will be optimized using sequential parameter optimization with model combination. It will be shown that parameter optimization via design of experiments leads to better values of the target variable than usual parameter optimization via grid search or genetic optimization algorithms. Furthermore, the results of this application study reveal, whether the combination of many models brings improvements in finding the optimal parameter setting.