The failure progression characteristics of adhesively bonded Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer (CFRP) composites are investigated using Acoustic Emission (AE) technique. Different failure progression modes such as matrix cracking, fiber breakage, delamination and through-thickness crack growth releases AE waveforms in different frequency domains. The characteristic features of these different AE waveforms are studied in Mel Scale, which is a perpetual frequency scale of average human hearing frequency. The recurring noise in the recorded waveforms has been identified more efficiently when the waveforms are analysed in Mel Scale. The recorded AE signals from the adhesively bonded CFRP under static tensile loading are stretched to match the Mel filter banks. The sampling rate of the recorded signal is adjusted from 1 MHz to 20 kHz. Following that, the Mel spectrogram and its cepstral coefficients are used for identifying the different failure modes from which the AE signals are generated. A comprehensive comparison of the AE analysis in Mel scale with conventional waveform processing techniques such as Fast Fourier Transform (FFT), Continuous Wavelet Transform (CWT), Wavelet Packet Transform (WPT) and Hilbert-Huang Transform (HHT) has been made. The advantages and further applications of Mel Scale over traditional waveform processing techniques in defining the failure modes in the composites are also discussed.