We are all used to listening to MP3 music files, which offer good quality playback with relatively small file sizes. Now imagine you could have the same music, but the file size is 1,000 times smaller than the equivalent MP3 file. That is exactly what researchers at the University of Rochester are claiming they are close to achieving.
The drastic reduction in the size of the audio file is not down to a new way of sampling the music. Instead, the researchers actually re-create the audio by making a computer replay the music using a knowledge of the instruments involved. A model of how a player interacts with an instrument and the affect that has on the sound the instrument produces is used. An easier way of thinking about it is to use the example of someone playing a piano. In this instance the music file would be the sheet of notes and the computer would be the piano player taking all the right actions reproducing the sounds.
A sound comparison demonstration is available at the University of Rochester website. There you can find an MP3 and virtual performance of a 20 second clarinet being played. The researchers openly admit the virtual version isn’t perfect, but that they are getting very close to the acceptable level.
This new way of reproducing music was unveiled at the International Conference on Acoustics and Signal Processing in Las Vegas this week. Mark Bocko, co-creator of the technology said:
This is essentially a human-scale system of reproducing music … Humans can manipulate their tongue, breath, and fingers only so fast, so in theory we shouldn’t really have to measure the music many thousands of times a second like we do on a CD. As a result, I think we may have found the absolute least amount of data needed to reproduce a piece of music.
This is certainly an interesting and novel way of looking at music reproduction. It essentially relies on software that is intelligent enough to play all instruments at the same level as professional human players. Then all you need do is show them which notes to play, how to play them and when to play them.
I have listened to the comparison sound files and you can clearly see there is a difference. The virtual version sounds like it was generated by a machine. Give them a few more iterations though, and the researchers might actually get it to the same level as MP3 files.
If they can achieve this for all instruments and the hardware/software required for playback is cheap, then I can see this potentially being a replacement for the MP3 format in the future. I think there is a long way to go before that happens, however.