Perception and Multimedia Computing

A Sampling of Audio Tools

Thursday 16 January 2014

This lab involves a guided exploration of two tools you might find helpful: minim (for
generating and analyzing audio in Processing), and Sonic Visualiser (for visualising and
analysing sound).

PART 1: MINIM
Minim is a library for working with sound in Processing.
You won’t have to use it for any coursework here, but
you may find it useful in this module or in the future.
1. Open Processing and select the “File” ! “Examples”
menu. Look for the minim examples folder, under
Libraries (see figure at right).
2. Open and explore the minim examples. Look at the
code used for loading a sound file, visualising a
waveform, visualising a spectrum, and synthesizing
sound.

PART 2: SONIC VISUALISER

1. This part is about running Sonic Visualiser and understanding its user interface.
• The Sonic Visualiser application is (should be) installed on the lab machines: a
double-click should start up the user interface. (If it is not installed, or if you wish to
install it on a personal machine, it is freely available from
http://www.sonicvisualiser.org/).
• Use the File ! Open menu command to open an audio file. Experiment with playing
it back, and with the various UI controls to see what they do. (Don’t have an audio
file handy? Try downloading
http://mirrors.creativecommons.org/ccmixter/contrib/Wired/Thievery%20Corporation
%20-%20Dc%203000.mp3 for starters.)

2. This part is about using the plugin mechanism to install and use audio analysis plugins
to extract and visualise interesting information about audio.
• Sonic Visualiser allows you to analyse pitch, harmony, rhythm, note onsets, and other
properties of the audio signal. In order to do this, some plugins may need to be
installed. If you’re on a lab machine, these may be installed already; check by going
to the “Transform” menu and seeing if you can find any options for “Analysis by
Category,” “Analysis by Plugin Name,” etc.
• To add new audio analysis plugins, visit http://www.vamp-
plugins.org/download.html#install and follow the installation instructions. Note that
these can be installed in your personal folder on a Mac, so no admin permission
should be necessary.
• Restart Sonic Visualiser once you’ve installed any plugins.
• To apply a plugin, load an audio file, select the “Pane” ! “Add New Pane” menu,
and then choose an audio analysis plugin from the “Transform” menu.

Experiment with different analysis plugins. Get a feel for what properties of the sound
can be analyzed, and with what sort of accuracy. Find one rhythm-based analysis (e.g.
onset-detection) which produces sensible results on your choice of music file, and
one pitch-based analysis (e.g. melodic-range spectrogram) which likewise produces
output which can be understood. For example, the image below shows the output of the
Chordino chord estimator plugin applied to a song:

Sonic Visualiser resources:

• Sonic Visualiser home page: http://www.sonicvisualiser.org
• VAMP plugins: http://www.vamp-plugins.org/
• Chris Cannam, Christian Landone, and Mark Sandler, 2010. “Sonic Visualiser: An
Open Source Application for Viewing, Analysing, and Annotating Music Audio
Files” Proc. ACM MM (pdf)