Researchers have digitally reproduced music in a file nearly 1,000 times smaller than a regular MP3 file.

What will they think of next?

They've got a ways to go before they start to put musicians out of business but if this technology succeeds to the point of not being able to differentiate between real music and its virtual counterpart it could revolutionize the music and recording industry as we know it. And I don't mean in a good way. What do you think? I know it sounds a little robotic at present but if they perfect it look out.

Best,
Mike



[This message has been edited by keybplayer (edited 04-02-2008).]

We're doomed anyway & been on a path of destruction son the mid 70's....so bring it on maybe it will bring a climax & reverse itself back to normalcy.

In other words it’s a sound modelled Clarinet instead of a sampled one, so what’s new? Sound modelling has been around for a few years now; quite a few VSTs use it, as does Wersi with its OAS 7 software. (This is the reason that the new voices only take up a fraction of memory compared to the previous sampled sounds)
Try True Pianos http://www.truepianos.com/ which produces a sound similar to a 2 or 3GB sampled piano with a fraction of the memory.
Another one is the Miles Trumpet http://www.soundfonts.it/?a=read&b=25
or http://www.sonic-core.net/en/products/soniccore.html

Bill


[This message has been edited by abacus (edited 04-02-2008).]

Reckon that's what will happen. People always like to be entertained by other people for the most part in my view, not just technology. It's the combination of a person AND the technology that makes the entertainment, so I think people will always be involved.
How we, as entertainers, choose to adopt and modify what we do and how we do it is totally up to us.

Remember the old saying
Technology is a very good servant
But a very bad master

Bill

Within five years you will be able to fit all of the music every produced and all of the movies ever produced on what harddrive that fits in your pocket. We don't need to wait for this new technology for a revolution in the music industry.

The file to make the sound may only be 1kb, but the application to replay it is probably Megabytes (and I'm not sure just how many clarinet solos you are going to want to walk around with!).

This is like saying that a MIDI file can do an entire piano concerto in a few kb's, while ignoring the gigabytes of data needed to play it...

BTW, anyone notice the date of this 'announcement'?

Well spotted, I missed it

Bill

[This message has been edited by abacus (edited 04-03-2008).]

I think you are mis-interpreting the technology used in making the music. The audio recording is not gigabytes of data needed to play it because it is not real audio data that is used in the first place, at least not in the file that is compressed anyway. It is not the audio itself in the original real clarinet recording used to make the compressed file but rather using a computer model a computer literally reproduces the original performance based on everything it knows about clarinets and clarinet playing i.e. the physics of a clarinet and the physics of a clarinet player and then reproduces it accordingly by way of a virtual model. Once this technology is spot on in its reproduction capabilities for any given instrument known and used in todays world and even those from yesteryear the real instrument would then be unnecessary in the recording of subsequent audio because the virtual instrument will have "learned" to reproduce the sound just as well as the real thing - without the tons of audio data necessary to record actual real instruments in an audio environment.

As far as putting musicians out of business, if this technology succeeds in a big way session players could become obsolete in my opinion, as well as musicians used in other recording venues such as in various types of Studio recordings. In other words, once the virtual instrument "learns" the behavior from its counterparts i.e. real instruments, thereafter the real instruments wouldn't be needed at all to produce music for the virtual modeling counterpart. If the virtual instrument(s) know(s) everything about the real instrument(s) already, both in the physics aspect of the instrument itself and the physics of the instrument player used to play the instrument(s), then only the virtual counterpart would be necessary to reproduce the music and/or sound of any given instrument, without the need of using real instruments at all to do so. At least so the theory goes anyway.

PS: I choose not to dabble in superstition. Neither does Stevie Wonder by the way. Next thing you know there will be conspiracy theorists coming out of the woodwork too.

Best,
Mike

[This message has been edited by keybplayer (edited 04-04-2008).]

Have you USED any modeling software?

It's a tradeoff... You don't need gigabytes of sample data, but you need vast amounts of computing power. The more accurate the model, the more power you need. And they still have a VERY long way to go to come out with ANY acoustic instrument model that will fool the listener (you didn't think for one minute that sounded like a REAL clarinet, did you?).

Let's take the piano, shall we... Pianoteq by Modartt http://www.pianoteq.com/ is a modeled piano. It's pretty good, and actually does a FEW things better than samples (string resonance, for instance), but compare it to Ivory http://www.ilio.com/synthogy/ivory/ and you realize it still has a way to go.

But the assertion that we were listening to MUSIC was absurd. We were listening to a very poor modeled clarinet. For some, that may indeed BE music. I would think, though, if you wanted to listen to music, you might want a few more instruments...! This is where the article blue-sky's us. The horsepower to even model ONE instrument truly accurately doesn't yet exist. You can get close, in a few cases, but no banana. But the horsepower to model an orchestra, even a small wind ensemble is decades away.

In the meantime, major Hollywood movies are being scored by sampled orchestras. You are being fooled by them every day on TV. This is NOW.

Modeled orchestras are 22nd century technology...