6 ms·

Sonic Visualiser: Viewing and analysing the contents of music audio files

94 points by cannam 10y ago

anotheryou 10y ago
There is no better tool I know :) Especially with the nice export function.
trishume 10y ago
I used this for developing an audio recognizer (https://github.com/trishume/PopClick https://github.com/trishume/PopClick) and it was incredibly cool and useful. You can write your own recognition and analysis plugins pretty easily and then overlay those on the spectrogram so you get a sense of what your program is doing and why it is going wrong. I don't think I could have ever successfully gotten a recognizer working if I hadn't found Sonic Visualiser. It's awesome.
imaginenore 10y ago
So why would I use it over Audacity, which can also show the audio spectrum?
- havenoaudacity 10y ago
  This one comes with extra autism.
- detaro 10y ago
  From a quick look at the screenshots, and the other comments here: because it offers more than the basic spectrum view of Audacity?
- rspeer 10y ago
  There's a big difference between just showing a bucketed Fourier transform of the whole audible spectrum, and showing a high-resolution, log-scale, musically-informed visualization of the part that can be heard as musical notes.
- cannam 10y ago
  More detailed dedicated visualisations, broader support for analysis plugins, and a focus on visualisation and analysis work rather than editing. (Audacity can use some of the same analysis plugins though.)
- ams6110 10y ago
  I don't understand why this question was downvoted.
MrJagil 10y ago
Been using this for years to recognise chords with the help of the Chordino extension. Great software, but the controls are a bit cumbersome (scrolling, zooming etc). Further, when you do audio editing, you rarely work at 0dB, so i've had many a shock tabbing into Sonic Visualiser and pressing play.
- cannam 10y ago
  That's good to know -- if you'd like to be any more detailed (e.g. how would you ideally like it to handle levels in order not to blow your ears off, or where are the controls most awkward) that would also be useful.
  - MrJagil 10y ago
    Just have it at -6 on startup. I'd be happy to give more detail. Email is in my description.
jarmitage 10y ago
Sonic Visualiser v3 has just been released, here's a list of features: http://sonicvisualiser.org/new-in-v3.html http://sonicvisualiser.org/new-in-v3.html Also it's open source: https://code.soundsoftware.ac.uk/projects/sonic-visualiser/files https://code.soundsoftware.ac.uk/projects/sonic-visualiser/f...
drawbars 10y ago
Also a staple piece of kit for ARGs that are using audio-based clues. Thanks for developing this software!
tomovo 10y ago
No Aphex Twin in the screenshot section? Missed opportunity right there.
blinry 10y ago
Shameless self-plug: I'm working on a similar tool for video files: http://nordlicht.github.io/ http://nordlicht.github.io/
rishabhd 10y ago
Have been using for this quite a long time, good tool for solving audio based ctf challenges as well.
woollysammoth 10y ago
The band Vulfpeck used the PNG export for this recent video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbO2e65gmwg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbO2e65gmwg
rotexo 10y ago
I Love Sonic Visualiser. I use it all the time for musical analysis to slice audio files for playback in SuperCollider. I only wish it had an annotation layer text file format like Praat does for phonetic analysis of speech audio--I know you can easily export CSV files, but the way Praat uses textgrids always felt more intuitive. I would also highly recommend using Sonic Visualiser to prototype an analysis pipeline, then automate the analysis with the Python vamp plugin host [1]. I think there is a command line interface called Sonic Annotator, but I never used it. [1] https://pypi.python.org/pypi/vamp https://pypi.python.org/pypi/vamp Edit: the text file thing is probably what the xml .svl format is for, huh
- cannam 10y ago
  Yes, the .svl file is a single layer from the session format, in XML. (The session format is itself an XML file, but compressed with bzip2 compression.) One thing SV does lack is a layer file format that can easily be interchanged between SV itself (for label alignment) and a text editor (for bulk text changes). Neither is there any built-in text editor for editing the whole content of a text transcription at once. I suppose this has to do with the initial focus being on music rather than speech, and having no particular desire to "compete" with Praat.
  - rotexo 10y ago
    Thanks for the explanation!

94 points by cannam 10y ago

There is no better tool I know :) Especially with the nice export function.

I used this for developing an audio recognizer (https://github.com/trishume/PopClick https://github.com/trishume/PopClick) and it was incredibly cool and useful. You can write your own recognition and analysis plugins pretty easily and then overlay those on the spectrogram so you get a sense of what your program is doing and why it is going wrong. I don't think I could have ever successfully gotten a recognizer working if I hadn't found Sonic Visualiser. It's awesome.

imaginenore 10y ago

So why would I use it over Audacity, which can also show the audio spectrum?

havenoaudacity 10y ago
This one comes with extra autism.
detaro 10y ago
From a quick look at the screenshots, and the other comments here: because it offers more than the basic spectrum view of Audacity?
rspeer 10y ago
There's a big difference between just showing a bucketed Fourier transform of the whole audible spectrum, and showing a high-resolution, log-scale, musically-informed visualization of the part that can be heard as musical notes.
cannam 10y ago
More detailed dedicated visualisations, broader support for analysis plugins, and a focus on visualisation and analysis work rather than editing. (Audacity can use some of the same analysis plugins though.)
ams6110 10y ago
I don't understand why this question was downvoted.

MrJagil 10y ago

Been using this for years to recognise chords with the help of the Chordino extension. Great software, but the controls are a bit cumbersome (scrolling, zooming etc). Further, when you do audio editing, you rarely work at 0dB, so i've had many a shock tabbing into Sonic Visualiser and pressing play.

cannam 10y ago
That's good to know -- if you'd like to be any more detailed (e.g. how would you ideally like it to handle levels in order not to blow your ears off, or where are the controls most awkward) that would also be useful.
- MrJagil 10y ago
  Just have it at -6 on startup. I'd be happy to give more detail. Email is in my description.

jarmitage 10y ago

Sonic Visualiser v3 has just been released, here's a list of features: http://sonicvisualiser.org/new-in-v3.html http://sonicvisualiser.org/new-in-v3.html Also it's open source: https://code.soundsoftware.ac.uk/projects/sonic-visualiser/files https://code.soundsoftware.ac.uk/projects/sonic-visualiser/f...

drawbars 10y ago

Also a staple piece of kit for ARGs that are using audio-based clues. Thanks for developing this software!

tomovo 10y ago

No Aphex Twin in the screenshot section? Missed opportunity right there.

blinry 10y ago

Shameless self-plug: I'm working on a similar tool for video files: http://nordlicht.github.io/ http://nordlicht.github.io/

rishabhd 10y ago

Have been using for this quite a long time, good tool for solving audio based ctf challenges as well.

woollysammoth 10y ago

The band Vulfpeck used the PNG export for this recent video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbO2e65gmwg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbO2e65gmwg

rotexo 10y ago

I Love Sonic Visualiser. I use it all the time for musical analysis to slice audio files for playback in SuperCollider. I only wish it had an annotation layer text file format like Praat does for phonetic analysis of speech audio--I know you can easily export CSV files, but the way Praat uses textgrids always felt more intuitive. I would also highly recommend using Sonic Visualiser to prototype an analysis pipeline, then automate the analysis with the Python vamp plugin host [1]. I think there is a command line interface called Sonic Annotator, but I never used it. [1] https://pypi.python.org/pypi/vamp https://pypi.python.org/pypi/vamp Edit: the text file thing is probably what the xml .svl format is for, huh

cannam 10y ago
Yes, the .svl file is a single layer from the session format, in XML. (The session format is itself an XML file, but compressed with bzip2 compression.) One thing SV does lack is a layer file format that can easily be interchanged between SV itself (for label alignment) and a text editor (for bulk text changes). Neither is there any built-in text editor for editing the whole content of a text transcription at once. I suppose this has to do with the initial focus being on music rather than speech, and having no particular desire to "compete" with Praat.
- rotexo 10y ago
  Thanks for the explanation!