What is needed is a system that is accurate to a few cents but can also
cover a wide range of pitch, at least 3 octaves, but 7 would be great.
It should be able to handle a wide variety of waveforms, drop outs, a
fair amount of noise and inharmonicity, and it should be able to handle
very fast changes in pitch, i.e., it should be able to accurately
transcribe virtuosic passages (64th notes, etc.), as well as glides,
vibrato, and portamento.
Besides displaying the data on a log(f0) vs. time chart, the system
should also be able to generate the data to a file for subsequent
post-processing research. Conversion to MIDI and musical notation are
nice features, but these are already available in programs once the
log(f) data is provided.