In the context of the Internet of Things (IoT), sound sensing applications
are required to run on embedded platforms where notions of product pricing and
form factor impose hard constraints on the available computing power. Whereas
Automatic Environmental Sound Recognition (AESR) algorithms are most often
developed with limited consideration for computational cost, this article seeks
which AESR algorithm can make the most of a limited amount of computing power
by comparing the sound classification performance em as a function of its
computational cost. Results suggest that Deep Neural Networks yield the best
ratio of sound classification accuracy across a range of computational costs,
while Gaussian Mixture Models offer a reasonable accuracy at a consistently
small cost, and Support Vector Machines stand between both in terms of
compromise between accuracy and computational cost
