Search by sound is the retrieval of information based on audio input. There are a handful of applications, specifically for mobile devices that utilize search by sound.
Shazam (service),
Soundhound
SoundHound Inc. is an audio and speech recognition company founded in 2005. It develops speech recognition, natural language understanding, sound recognition and search technologies. Its featured products include Houndify, a Voice AI developer p ...
(previously Midomi),
Axwave
Axwave, Inc. (acquired by Samba TV, announced in August 2019) was an international software development company that developed a proprietary fingerprinting-based automatic content recognition (ACR) technology. Axwave was founded by Damián Scavo ...
,
ACRCloud
ACRCloud (Formerly Syntec TV) is an automatic content recognition platform based on acoustic fingerprinting technology. Its creator intended to help media, broadcasters and app developers to identify, monitor and monetize content on the second sc ...
and others have seen considerable success by using a simple algorithm to match an
acoustic fingerprint to a song in a library. These applications take a sample clip of a song, or a user-generated melody and check a
music library/
music database
Below is a table of online music databases that are largely free of charge. Note that many of the sites provide a specialized service or focus on a particular music genre. Some of these operate as an online music store or purchase referral serv ...
to see where the clip matches with the song. From there, song information will queried and displayed to the user.
These kind of applications are mainly used for finding a song that the user does not already know. Searching by sound is not limited to just identifying
songs, but also for identifying
melodies,
tunes
Tunes may refer to:
Places and jurisdictions
* Tunes (Silves), a parish in Portugal
* Tunes, Norway, a village in Norway
* Tunes, Tunisia, now Tunis, eponymous capital city of Tunisia
** Tunes (see), a suppressed Latin Catholic titular bishopri ...
or
advertisements,
sound library management
In physics, sound is a vibration that propagates as an acoustic wave, through a transmission medium such as a gas, liquid or solid.
In human physiology and psychology, sound is the ''reception'' of such waves and their ''perception'' by the ...
and
video files
A video file format is a type of file format for storing digital video data on a computer system. Video is almost always stored using lossy compression to reduce the file size.
A video file normally consists of a container (e.g. in the Matrosk ...
.
Acoustic fingerprinting
The way these apps search by sound is through generating an
acoustic fingerprint; a digital summary of the sound. A microphone is used to pick up an audio sample, which is then broken down into a simple numeric signature, a code unique to each track. Using the same method of fingerprinting sounds, when Shazam picks up a sound clip, it will generate a signature for that clip. Then it’s simple pattern matching from there using an extensive audio music database.
The practice of using acoustic fingerprints is not limited to just music, however, but other areas of the entertainment business as well. Shazam also can identify television shows with the same technique of acoustic fingerprinting. Of course, this method of breaking down a sound sample into a unique signature is useless unless there is an extensive database of music with keys to match with the samples. Shazam has over 11 million songs in its database.
Other services such as Midomi and Soundhound allow users to add to that library of music in order to expand the chances to match a sound sample with its corresponding sound.
Query by humming
Midomi and Soundhound both offer
query by humming
Query by humming (QbH) is a music retrieval system that branches off the original classification systems of title, artist, composer, and genre. It normally applies to songs or other music with a distinct single theme or melody. The system involves ...
. This is a branch off of acoustic fingerprints but is still a musical retrieval system. After receiving a user-generated hummed melody, which is the input query, the system returns a ranked list of songs that are closest to the user query.
See also
*
AmpliFIND AmpliFIND is an acoustic fingerprinting service and a software development kit developed by the US company MusicIP.
MusicIP first marketed their fingerprinting algorithm and service as MusicDNS. In 2006, MusicIP reported that the MusicDNS database ...
*
Automatic content recognition
*
List of online music databases
Below is a table of online music databases that are largely free of charge. Note that many of the sites provide a specialized service or focus on a particular music genre. Some of these operate as an online music store or purchase referral serv ...
*
Music information retrieval
*
Sound recognition
Sound recognition is a technology, which is based on both traditional pattern recognition theories and audio signal analysis methods. Sound recognition technologies contain preliminary data processing, feature extraction and classification algori ...
References
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