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Title:

Making Music Sound Better Online: Improving Flow and Presentation

Your vote:
Yes No
Organizer:
Rusty Hodge, SomaFM.com internet radio
Description:
Most music services present music like a jukebox, not a professional DJ. Songs stacked serially, not flowing together for various reasons: tonal balance, loudness levels, speed and intensity. We discuss improving that presentation: automated mixing and segue tools; "harmonic key mixing" tracks; improving sound quality of MP3s and alternative Codecs; audio processing systems keeping subjective loudness and tone consistent.
Questions
Answered:
  1. What's wrong with presenting music in jukebox or "iPod shuffle" fashion, my listeners don't seem to mind.
  2. What's the history of presenting music radio? Didn't DJs just play whatever they wanted to play?
  3. Where is the balance between sample rate, bitrate and audio quality in various codecs?
  4. What factors go into deciding what platform to deliver music on?
  5. How can you deal with the differences in EQ and perceived sound levels in different sound recordings?
  6. What is "keying", or segueing/mixing songs in a way that keeps them harmonically related?
  7. I like songs mixed together, but automatic crossfades sound like crap. What's the alternative?
  8. What are ways to batch process songs so that their EQ and perceived levels are more consistent?
  9. Do some players sound better than others? Does WMP11 sound better than Flash?
  10. How can you make a customized radio stream sound like it's mixed by a live DJ?
Level:
Advanced
Category:
New Technology / Next Generation
Type:
Panel
Event:
SXSW Interactive 2009
Rusty Hodge
on 8/8/08
Audio Processing is something that all terrestrial radio stations use. Companies like Orban and Omnia develop very sophisticated real-time DSP systems that can be used to tailor the sound to be consistent. You all have noticed that one MP3 might sound much louder or softer than another. When you're listing to music in the background, you want the level to remain constant (but you don't necessarily want the dynamic range drastically reduced). We'll discuss ways to tailor the sound to specific audiences: someone listening on a home stereo will want a cleaner sound, while someone listening on cheap multimedia speakers at work may find things sound better with more aggressive audio processing. And we'll talk about audio processing for mobile devices as well, and even get into how pre-processing sound prior to running it through a CODEC (e.g. mp3, aac) can make the codec sound much better.
Rusty Hodge
on 8/8/08
I'm interested in hearing more comments from developers of "audio presentation tools". You know, software for playing back music; music scheduling tools, etc.
Chad Pranke
on 11/8/08
With so many different music formats and sources, I see this becoming an increasingly important topic. I also found it interesting that you mentioned harmonic mixing, as our Mixed In Key product detects the key of songs to facilitate this process. While we currently market to the club DJ community, it would be interesting to see if there were a way to apply our harmonic mixing software and techniques to internet radio.
Online Games
on 24/10/09
I'm interested in hearing more comments from developers of "audio presentation tools". You know, software for playing back music; music scheduling tools, etc.
Art Directory
on 8/11/09
Making music to sound good Online is a big challenge presently. Some presentations are just too bad that the music breaks.
blu ray ripper
on 13/11/09
So looking forward to this..
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