this invention finds use in many applications where the electronics is essentially the same but the external appearance of the device may vary . fig1 illustrates a desk telephone including base 10 , keypad 11 , display 13 and handset 14 . as illustrated in fig1 , the telephone has speakerphone capability including speaker 15 and microphone 16 . the cordless telephone illustrated in fig2 is similar except that base 20 and handset 21 are coupled by radio frequency signals , instead of a cord , through antennas 23 and 24 . power for handset 21 is supplied by internal batteries ( not shown ) charged through terminals 26 and 27 in base 20 when the handset rests in cradle 29 . fig3 illustrates a conference phone or speakerphone such as found in business offices . telephone 30 includes microphone 31 and speaker 32 in a sculptured case . telephone 30 may include several microphones , such as microphones 34 and 35 to improve voice reception or to provide several inputs for echo rejection or noise rejection , as disclosed in u . s . pat . no . 5 , 138 , 651 ( sudo ). fig4 illustrates what is known as a hands - free kit for providing audio coupling to a cellular telephone , illustrated in fig5 . hands - free kits come in a variety of implementations but generally include powered speaker 36 attached to plug 37 , which fits an accessory outlet or a cigarette lighter socket in a vehicle . a hands - free kit also includes cable 38 terminating in plug 39 . plug 39 fits the headset socket on a cellular telephone , such as socket 41 ( fig5 ) in cellular telephone 42 . some kits use rf signals , like a cordless phone , to couple to a telephone . a hands - free kit also typically includes a volume control and some control switches , e . g . for going “ off hook ” to answer a call . a hands - free kit also typically includes a visor microphone ( not shown ) that plugs into the kit . audio processing circuitry constructed according to the invention can be included in a hands - free kit or in a cellular telephone . the various forms of telephone can all benefit from the invention . fig6 is a block diagram of the major components of a cellular telephone . typically , the blocks correspond to integrated circuits implementing the indicated function . microphone 51 , speaker 52 , and keypad 53 are coupled to signal processing circuit 54 . circuit 54 performs a plurality of functions and is known by several names in the art , differing by manufacturer . for example , infineon calls circuit 54 a “ single chip baseband ic .” qualcomm calls circuit 54 a “ mobile station modem .” the circuits from different manufacturers obviously differ in detail but , in general , the indicated functions are included . a cellular telephone includes both audio frequency and radio frequency circuits . duplexer 55 couples antenna 56 to receive processor 57 . duplexer 55 couples antenna 56 to power amplifier 58 and isolates receive processor 57 from the power amplifier during transmission . transmit processor 59 modulates a radio frequency signal with an audio signal from circuit 54 . in non - cellular applications , such as speakerphones , there are no radio frequency circuits and signal processor 54 may be simplified somewhat . problems of echo cancellation and noise remain and are handled in audio processor 60 . it is audio processor 60 that is modified to include the invention . how that modification takes place is more easily understood by considering the echo canceling and noise reduction portions of an audio processor in more detail . fig7 is a detailed block diagram of a noise reduction and echo canceling circuit ; e . g . see chapter 6 of digital signal processing in telecommunications by shenoi , prentice - hall , 1995 . the following describes signal flow through the transmit channel , from microphone input 62 to line output 64 . the receive channel , from line input 66 to speaker output 68 , works in the same way , except that the gain of a particular stage may be different from the gain of a corresponding stage in the transmit channel . a new voice signal entering microphone input 62 may or may not be accompanied by ambient noise or sounds from speaker output 68 . the signals from input 62 are digitized in a / d converter 71 and coupled to summation network 72 . there is , as yet , no signal from echo canceling circuit 73 and the data proceeds to non - linear processing circuit 74 , which includes a music detector and other circuitry , such as a noise reduction circuit , a residual echo canceling circuit , and a center clipper . the output from non - linear processing circuit 74 is coupled to summation circuit 76 , where comfort noise 75 is optionally added to the signal . the signal is then converted back to analog form by d / a converter 77 , amplified in amplifier 78 , and coupled to line output 64 . circuit 73 reduces acoustic echo and circuit 81 reduces line echo as directed by control 80 . the operation of these last two circuits is known per se in the art ; e . g . as described in the above - identified text . fig8 is a block diagram of a music detector for controlling at least a portion of the non - linear processor . the music detector is based upon a circuit that looks at the spectral amplitude ( or energy ) of samples of the signal and computes the ratio of the geometric mean to the arithmetic mean of the spectrum . a geometric mean is the n th root of the product of n samples . an arithmetic mean is the sum of n samples divided by n . as known in mathematics , this ratio is always less than one unless the data are equal . for example , 1 × 2 × 3 × 4 4 & lt ; ( 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 ) / 4 . equality , or perfect smoothness , is unattainable so , in practice , the ratio is always less than one . because a geometric mean involves repeated multiplication , the precision of the root will be much less than the precision of the factors of the product if sixteen bit precision is used . on the other hand , increasing the number of bits of precision can significantly slow the calculation . this dilemma is solved according to another aspect of the invention by computing the geometric mean , arithmetic mean , and their ratio using floating - point notation ( mantissa and exponent ) in a 16 - bit , fixed - point processor , referred to herein as a pseudo floating - point operation . the exponent is stored in a 16 - bit memory location . the performance of the pseudo floating - point operation is equal to or better than conventional floating - point performance using processors of the same precision , e . g . 16 - bits . using the pseudo floating - point operation , the system is able to detect the presence of music correctly even if the signal level is very small ( less than − 45 dbfs ). the steps in fig9 , 10 and 11 illustrate the computation of sfm using exponent and mantissa format . the norm factor mentioned in fig9 is the number of left shifts needed to scale a given number to the range [ 0 . 5 , 1 . 0 ]. in general , in a musical piece , a singer is accompanied by musical instruments playing at different frequency ranges . under these circumstances , a spectral flatness measure of the entire spectrum may not give a distinct , discriminating feature to distinguish the music from noise . in order to circumvent this problem , according to another aspect of the invention , the input signal is filtered to divide the signal into subband . the subbands are preferably octaval and are individually weighted to give more emphasis to lower frequencies . the following table shows the octave spacing used in one embodiment of the invention . the first subband is a whole octave . the remaining subbands are split octave . the subband spacing was determined empirically by performing monte - carol simulation on a large database consisting of two hundred fifty - two music files and one hundred eighty - nine noise files . in the table , l refers to the bin number corresponding the lower frequency boundary , h refers to the bin number corresponding to the higher frequency boundary and m is the number of spectral bins in each subband . table subband no . ( i ) freq . ( hz .) l h m α 1 500 - 1000 33 64 32 1 . 00 2 1000 - 1500 65 96 32 0 . 50 3 1500 - 2000 97 128 32 0 . 73 4 2000 - 2500 129 160 32 0 . 61 5 2500 - 3500 161 224 64 0 . 52 the spectral flatness measure ( sfm ) in each subband is calculated using the following formula . sfm ⁡ ( n , i ) = ∏ k = l ⁡ ( i ) h ⁡ ( i ) ⁢ x 2 ⁡ ( k ) m ⁡ ( i ) 1 m ⁡ ( i ) ⁢ ∑ k = l ⁡ ( i ) h ⁡ ( i ) ⁢ x ⁡ ( k ) sfm ( i ) spectral measure for i subband at time ( n ), l ( i ) and h ( i ) correspond to the lower and higher spectral bin number for i th subband and m ( i ) is the number of bins in i th subband . one can distinguish music and speech from noise using any one of the many n - feature sat classification algorithms , such as k - nearest - neighbor classifier , on the data for subband sfm . however , a simpler classification scheme is used in the invention . according to another aspect of the invention , a single test statistic is derived from the individual subband sfm . the test statistic is derived from an exponentially weighted sum of subband sfms , as shown in the following equation . β ⁡ ( n ) = ∑ ( i - 1 ) q ⁢ α ( i - 1 ) ⁢ sfm ⁡ ( n , i ) α is the weighting factor , q is the number of subbands and sfm ( i ) is the sfm for i th subband . the weighting is chosen to emphasize low frequencies , i . e . the contribution of individual sfms gradually decreases as frequency increases . this is because , music , speech , and the noise spectrum share similar spectral characteristics at high frequencies . a weighting factor less than one (& lt ; 1 ) suffices . a table could be used instead of calculating the weighting factor . the test statistic β is preferably median filtered to reduce spurious spikes in the sfm estimate . that is , where p is the size of the median filter . the test statistic is further smoothed by calculating a rolling average to reduce the variance of the statistic . where ε is the smoothing constant , γ ( n ) is the smoothed test statistics at time ( n ) and γ ( n − 1 ) is the test statistic at time ( n − 1 ). finally , the smoothed test statistic is compared with a threshold to detect the presence of music . specifically , if the smoothed test statistics are greater than the threshold η , then the spectrum is relatively flat and background noise is present and musicdetect goes to a logic “ false ” or , for positive logic , a “ 0 ” ( zero ). if the smoothed test statistic is not greater than the threshold η , then music is present and musicdetect is true or “ 1 ”. the musicdetect signal is used by control 80 ( fig7 ) to prevent noise reduction circuitry in non - linear processor 74 from reducing noise when music is present . the invention thus provides a method for unambiguously distinguishing mainstream music genre from noise . the method does so efficiently , requiring little computational power , in part , due to the use of a pseudo floating - point operation in a fixed - point processor , and does so in real time . having thus described the invention , it will be apparent to those of skill in the art that various modifications can be made within the scope of the invention . for example , circuits 72 and 76 ( fig7 ) are called “ summation ” circuits with the understanding that a simple arithmetic process is being carried out , which can be either digital or analog , whether the process entails subtracting one signal from another signal or inverting ( changing the sign of one signal and then adding it to another signal . stated another way , “ summation ” is defined herein as generic to addition and subtraction . rather than dividing the spectrum into subbands and individually weighting the subbands , one could simply filter and analyze the lower portion of the spectrum , e . g . 300 - 1200 hz . rather than dividing the spectrum into octaval subbands , one could use exponentially related subbands . that is , the subbands can be related by other than a power of two ; e . g . 1 . 5 , 2 . 5 , or 3 . the system is not reliable using bark bands ( center frequencies of 570 , 700 , 840 , 1000 , 1170 , 1370 , 1600 , 1850 , 2150 , 2500 , 2900 , 3400 hz ). the range covered is less than the frequency response of a telephone , roughly 50 - 3000 hz . in systems having wider frequency response , a different set of octaves can be used . rather than completely preventing noise reduction , a high on musicdetect could be used to reduce the effect of noise reduction circuitry , rather than shutting it off .