The present invention generally relates to digital watermarking and steganography. In one implementation, a method is provided including acts of receiving a media signal comprising a steganographic signal redundantly embedded therein; selecting a subset of the media signal for steganographic signal detection, wherein the subset of the media signal is selected based on at least one media signal characteristic associated with the subset; and detecting a steganographic signal hidden in the subset of the media signal. In another implementation, a digital watermark detector is providing including: electronic processing circuitry; memory; and executable instructions stored in memory for execution by said electronic processing circuitry. The instructions comprises instructions to: process a media signal comprising a digital watermark redundantly embedded therein; select a subset of the media signal for watermark detection, wherein the subset of the media signal is selected based on at least one media signal characteristic associated with the subset; and detect a digital watermark hidden in the subset of the media signal.