Each STFT sample represents a circularly continuous tone

Evidence

An illustrative feature of the STFT representation for time–frequency adaptive processing is that each STFT sample, due to the definition of the DFT, corresponds to a circularly continuous tone (see Figure 15.7). If the forward transform involves windowing or zero padding prior to the FFT, the STFT components are simply phase-organized so that the frequency band signals cancel or amplify each other to form the envelope of the window and zero padding. — Ville Pulkki, Matti Karjalainen, Communication Acoustics- An…, 2104

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains the circular/tone interpretation central to understanding STFT bin meaning.