24. A method comprising: performing a first-stage processing operation on an audio signal, the first stage processing operation including a windowed signal analysis that derives a raw feature vector; performing a second stage statistical processing operation on the raw feature vector to derive a reduced feature vector; performing a third stage processing operation on the reduced feature vector to derive at least one sound object label that refers to the original audio signal; and mapping the at least one sound object label into a stream of control events sent to a sound-object-driven, multimedia-aware software application, wherein the sound-object-driven multimedia-aware software application is responsive to the stream of control events to configure processing for the audio signal, and wherein any of the processing operations of the first through third stages are configurable.
24. A method comprising: performing a first-stage processing operation on an audio signal, the first stage processing operation including a windowed signal analysis that derives a raw feature vector; performing a second stage statistical processing operation on the raw feature vector to derive a reduced feature vector; performing a third stage processing operation on the reduced feature vector to derive at least one sound object label that refers to the original audio signal; and mapping the at least one sound object label into a stream of control events sent to a sound-object-driven, multimedia-aware software application, wherein the sound-object-driven multimedia-aware software application is responsive to the stream of control events to configure processing for the audio signal, and wherein any of the processing operations of the first through third stages are configurable. 25. The method claim 24 , wherein the first through fourth stages are all processed in real-time for use in an on-the-fly analytical operation.