3D Audio Corpus Explorer - Alpha Demo

Hi folks! I’m a postgrad at Huddersfield and have been working on a 3D tool for the purpose of corpus browsing, wanted to share a very early first prototype for y’all to play around with :slight_smile:

Inspired by similar tools like AudioStellar, but with a 3D twist, in a vein similar to this and this from @tmhglnd and @balintlaczko. Though I’m also quite interested in displaying multiple points per sample, showing how one audio sample changes over time in the extra Z axis.

Pasted image 20240131034732

I’d say at the current stage it’s an early alpha, so expect some bugs, but it’s got enough to play around with now that it should be fairly interesting to try out!

If you do give it a try, I’d really appreciate it if you took just a bit of time to fill in the feedback form, it’d really help me with my research!

>>> Feedback Form <<<

ACorEx - Windows (5.9 MB)

ACorEx - MacOS (6.5 MB)

Linux to also come down the line.

Test Samples (266 MB)
(or use your own sample collections! *currently only works with mp3/ogg/wav/flac file formats)

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Very cool.

I spend so much time looking at UMAP’d plots that it’s odd seeing the same corpora in a different / more object space:

Look at that one silly little line lol!

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I like the basis here. Very lightweight, easy to share, easy to use too!

Some food for thought:

  1. I think resampling the audio to a lower sample-rate will give you a huge speedup for batch processing and in my anecdotal experience the results are still pretty good for pulling apart samples spectrally.

  2. WASD support? :slight_smile:

  3. Envisage a way early on to have the data you create in the application exportable, so you can use it everywhere else for yourself, but also make it possible for others to integrate it as a tool in a flexible way.

Cool!

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Hey @fearne ,
just tried ACorEx and it’s great, very intuitive. Yeah, WASD would be awesome to have :wink:

I saw that in the folder there are two fmod dll, what are those for? I’m curious because I use FMOD everyday and I’ve been dreaming to have a plugin like this one for ages.

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Thanks @moonpalace! I’m primarily using OpenFrameworks for the cross-platform implementation, I believe FMOD is just one of the libraries they use for high level sound playback :slight_smile:

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Thanks. This is very nice for the extra information that is captured in the spatial figure of the complete sample. Also interesting from a visualisation perspective. Also the navigation in 3D space using a trackpad is much more intuitive and responsive than what I am used to when using 3D programs like Rhino or Unity.
That said, it is also difficult to recognise individual samples within the corpus. Do you intend to use some sort of color scheme perhaps to show which points are actually connected to each other before selection?
It would be nice to have some sort of separate scaling on the time axis.
I have just started exploring the idea of literally using 3D space for controlling using Mixed Reality glasses (Xreal). The engine used for 3D mapping is unity. In my specific use case I’ll probably go with that environment for further development for the moment. Something to take into consideration perhaps?

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I tried to do your questionnaire. I came to the end and was only then confronted with the many microsoft accounts I have apparently accumulated to conform my responses. Through various interactions with said company I have accumulated those and none of them worked. You might have a failed survey. Screw microsoft. I am not going to try endlessly. Sorry.

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No worries Hans, it came through, thanks :slight_smile:

Colour is on my list of areas to tackle for better visual clarity for sure.

Virtual/mixed reality has crossed my mind, it’d definitely be interesting to explore! Though I think it’s a little outside the scope of the project for me at this moment.

Yeah, I understand that MR/VR is a step further when applied within your project, but it is probably an idea to think about the exportability / integrability of your project in these environments.