Review an discussion on classical STFT-based frequency estimators

Sinusoidal modeling is based on the decomposition of audio signals into a sum of sinusoidal components plus a noise residual part. It involves accurate sinusoid parameters estimation and, in particular, accurate frequency estimation. A broad category of methods uses the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) as a starting point to compute frequency. All these methods present very similar forms of estimators, but the relations between them are not yet fully understood. This work proposes to take a deeper look into these relations. The first goal of this work is to present a clear review and description of the classical FFT-based frequency estimators. A new estimator similar to the phase vocoder is presented. The second goal of this work is to identify the common hypotheses and the common steps of the processes for this category of estimators. Lastly experimental comparisons are given.