The Hi-Audio research team is excited to unveil its new online platform (https://hiaudio.fr) tailored for musicians and researchers specializing in audio and Music Information Retrieval (MIR).
This web application is a key initiative among several projects housed under the Hi-Audio banner. Supported by an ERC Advanced Grant since 2022, Hi-Audio aims to address the critical shortage of multitrack music data in terms of genre, annotations, and accessibility.
The platform features a groundbreaking online DAW that allows musicians to record tracks asynchronously from any location, ensuring that each track is captured without interference from other instruments, a boon for tasks like audio source separation and generative audio.
First introduced at the ISMIR 2023 congress in Milan during the Late Breaking Demos session, Hi-Audio stands out for its commitment to a public and open-source ecosystem, adhering to the FAIR principles. This commitment fosters a collaborative environment where the research community can share knowledge and leverage the data generated. Notably, the team has developed innovative signal processing methods to mitigate latency in web-based audio recordings, with publications on these advancements expected in the coming months.
Prof. Gaël Richard showing the platform to attendees during ISMIR 2023.
At ISMIR 2024 in San Francisco, the team showcased a new project collecting various renditions of the “Happy Birthday” song, now in the public domain (see the story of Happy Birthday tune towards public access). All materials on the platform are published under a Creative Commons license to address copyright and intellectual property concerns adequately.
Promotional video of the Happy Birthday collection.
The platform has begun integrating Machine Learning models from the Essentia library by MTG (Music Technology Group), Barcelona, facilitating the first automatic annotation tasks on audio tracks—an essential function in data science.
One of the significant challenges this year is enhancing AI (Artificial Intelligence) integration and promoting community use to foster new data creation. To this end, a practical workshop is scheduled for April at Télécom Paris, where participants will learn to use the application and have the opportunity to record their own tracks.
Interested individuals can register for the workshop here or contact the team for more information at the following link: https://hi-audio.imt.fr/contact/
The European Research Council is a public body for funding of scientific and technological research conducted within the European Union.