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audio-retrieval

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Language-based Audio Retrieval Dataset

This dataset is derived from the DCASE 2022 Challenge Task 6 (Subtask B) - Language-based Audio Retrieval evaluation dataset, originally published on Zenodo.

Overview

This dataset contains 1,000 audio files paired with natural language captions, designed for evaluating language-based audio retrieval systems. The dataset has been preprocessed and structured into parquet files for efficient loading and processing in machine learning workflows.

Dataset Structure

Files

corpus.parquet (1000 entries)
Contains the audio corpus with embedded binary audio data.
- file_name: Name of the audio file
- sound_id: Unique identifier for each sound (from Freesound)
- audio: Binary audio data (WAV format)
query.parquet (1000 queries)
Contains natural language queries/captions for retrieval.
- query_id: Identifier matching the sound_id
- query: Natural language description of the audio
qrels.parquet (1000 relevance judgments)
Ground truth relevance judgments for evaluation.
- query_id: Query identifier
- corpus_id: Corpus item identifier
- score: Relevance score (1 = relevant)

Original Source Files

retrieval_audio/: Directory containing 1,000 WAV audio files
retrieval_audio_metadata.csv: Metadata for each audio file including:
- File name, keywords, sound_id, Freesound URL
- Start/end samples, manufacturer, license information
retrieval_captions.csv: Natural language captions for each audio file
retrieval_audio.7z: Compressed archive of audio files

Utility Files

dataset_creator.ipynb: Jupyter notebook used to process and create the parquet files
requirements.txt: Python dependencies
LICENSE: License information

Dataset Statistics

Total audio files: 1,000
Audio format: WAV (various sample rates from Freesound)
Caption format: Single natural language description per audio file
Audio sources: Freesound platform
Average audio duration: ~15-30 seconds (variable)

Usage Example

import pandas as pd
import pyarrow.parquet as pq

# Load the corpus
corpus = pq.read_table('corpus.parquet').to_pandas()
print(f"Corpus shape: {corpus.shape}")

# Load queries
queries = pq.read_table('query.parquet').to_pandas()
print(f"Number of queries: {len(queries)}")

# Load relevance judgments
qrels = pq.read_table('qrels.parquet').to_pandas()
print(f"Number of relevance judgments: {len(qrels)}")

# Access audio binary data
audio_binary = corpus.iloc[0]['audio']

# Access caption/query
caption = queries.iloc[0]['query']
print(f"Example caption: {caption}")

Example Data

Sample Audio Caption

"A liquid continuously being poured out and hitting a bottom base."

Sample Metadata

File: drainage pipe running.wav
Keywords: atmosphere, field-recording, nature, spring, water, woods, forest, ambient
Sound ID: 235940
Freesound Link: https://freesound.org/people/odilonmarcenaro/sounds/235940
License: CC BY 3.0

Task Description

This dataset is designed for language-based audio retrieval, where the goal is to:

Given a natural language query (caption), retrieve the most relevant audio clip(s) from the corpus
Evaluate retrieval performance using standard metrics (e.g., Recall@K, Mean Average Precision)

Each query has exactly one relevant audio file in the corpus (1-to-1 mapping).

Source Dataset Information

Original Dataset

Name: Language-based audio retrieval DCASE 2022 evaluation dataset
Version: 1.0
Published: May 29, 2022
Creator: Samuel Lipping (Tampere University)
DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.6590983

Audio Source

All audio files are sourced from the Freesound platform and are licensed under various Creative Commons licenses. Please refer to retrieval_audio_metadata.csv for specific license information for each file.

Development Dataset

This is the evaluation dataset for DCASE 2022 Task 6B. For training and development, use the Clotho v2.1 dataset available at: https://zenodo.org/record/4783391

License

Audio files: Licensed under various Creative Commons licenses as specified in retrieval_audio_metadata.csv (from Freesound platform)
Captions: Tampere University license (see LICENSE file)

Citation

If you use this dataset, please cite:

@dataset{lipping_2022_6590983,
  author       = {Lipping, Samuel},
  title        = {{Language-based audio retrieval DCASE 2022 
                   evaluation dataset}},
  month        = may,
  year         = 2022,
  publisher    = {Zenodo},
  version      = {1.0},
  doi          = {10.5281/zenodo.6590983},
  url          = {https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6590983}
}

References

Frederic Font, Gerard Roma, and Xavier Serra. 2013. Freesound technical demo. In Proceedings of the 21st ACM international conference on Multimedia (MM '13). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 411-412. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/2502081.2502245
DCASE 2022 Challenge: https://dcase.community/challenge2022/
Lipping, S. (2022). Language-based audio retrieval DCASE 2022 evaluation dataset (1.0) [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6590983