Contact: Joshua A. Chamot
jchamot@nsf.gov
703-292-7730
National Science Foundation

MediaMined Distinguishes not only Instruments from Voices, but Acoustic from Electric

Caption: The algorithms driving Imagine research's MediaMinedTM software differentiate between instruments, voices and other sounds without needing keywords and indexes sound files to allow for sound-similarity searches. In the image above, the sound file for Yoda's quote "You must feel the force around you ..." with background music and noise (left screen) looks quite different from the sound file for an acoustic guitar (center screen) and that for an electric guitar (right screen). However, the true impact of the software is its ability to find clips that relate to each of those sound files based on a user's need. For example, a user can search for hard-rock tracks with extensive electric guitar solos without weeding through acoustic guitar or even jazz guitar tracks -- all without ever entering a keyword.

Credit: Imagine Research, Inc

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Related news release: Sound, digested