Summarizing digital audio data

An apparatus for summarizing digital audio data comprising:

• a feature extractor for receiving audio data and directly analyzing the audio data to identify a representation of the audio data having at least one calculated feature characteristic of the audio data;
• a classifier in communication with the feature extractor for classifying the audio data on the basis of the representation received from the feature extractor into a category selected from at least two categories;
• and
• a summarizer in communication with the classifier for generating an acoustic signal representative of a summarization of the digital audio data, wherein the summarization is dependent on the category selected by the classifier.

A computer program product for summarizing digital audio data comprising a computer usable medium having computer readable program code means embodied in said medium for causing the summarizing of digital audio data, said computer program product comprising:

• a computer readable program code means for directly analyzing the audio data to identify a representation of the audio data having at least one calculated feature characteristic of the audio data;
• a computer readable program code for classifying the audio data on the basis of the representation into a category selected from at least two categories;
• and
• a computer readable program code for generating an acoustic signal representative of a summarization of the digital audio data, wherein the summarization is dependent on the selected category.