Spatial and Frequency Approaches for Audio File Protection

Abstract

In order to protect audio files, we propose in this paper a new integration scheme for blind audio file watermarking. The goal is to find a compromise between capacity and imperceptibility in order to hide as much data as possible while minimizing file degradation. This integration scheme is implemented in the three insertion domains: spatial, frequency and multi-resolution domains. For the spatial-domain integration, the mark is inserted directly into the data samples. For the frequency-domain integration, a Discrete Cosine Transform is applied to the audio frames; after the thresholding and quantification step, the watermark is inserted into the Discrete Cosine Transform coefficients to obtain the watermarked file. For the multi-resolution-domain insertion, a single-level Discrete Wavelet Transform is applied using the scaling low-pass filter and wavelet high-pass filter. The watermark integration is then performed using the obtained AC coefficients. The proposed concealment process combines three values to integrate two bits and only one may be modified, which reduces the probability of change unlike other approaches. This implies less modification and therefore less distortion of the host file; this explains the good Signal-to-Noise Ratio obtained of more than 59[Formula: see text]dB for the spatial-domain integration and therefore a reasonable imperceptibility. An evaluation of the watermark’s robustness demonstrates that the proposed schemes generate reasonably robust watermarked samples against various attacks with a high-quality watermark with normalized cross-correlation greater than 0.9 for the three insertion domains.