A matching machine accordingly accesses a query fingerprint that includes query sub-fingerprints that have been generated from query segments of a portion of query audio. After selecting reference sub-fingerprints for comparison to the query sub-fingerprints, the matching machine identifies a best-matching subset of the reference sub-fingerprints by evaluating total matches between the query sub-fingerprints and different subsets of the reference sub-fingerprints. The match machine then generates a count vector that stores the total counts mapped to respective offsets from a reference point in the reference sub-fingerprints. The matching machine determines a maximum count among the total counts and classifies the reference sub-fingerprints as a match with the query sub-fingerprints based on the maximum count.