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Statistically Optimal Music

ShinyPlasticBag writes "'Eigenradio makes its optimal music by analyzing in real time dozens of radio stations at once. When our bank of computers has heard enough music, it will go to work on making more just like it. Since we listen to so much music all the time, Eigenradio is always on and always live. What you hear on Eigenradio is the best of the New Music, distilled and de-correlated. One song on Eigenradio is worth at least twenty songs on old radio.' Listen up here or here (SHOUTcast)."

7 of 296 comments (clear)

  1. Peercast to avoid the Slashdotting? by Kaimelar · · Score: 3, Informative

    This idea has sparked my interest, but the streams are most definately Slashdotted. Would it be possible for someone who has the stream to use Peercast to help take some of the burden off the server?

  2. M3U by yerricde · · Score: 3, Informative

    M3U is a text file containing a newline-delimited list of resource identifiers from which to stream audio or video. They can be URIs or local paths. XMMS, Winamp, and many other popular media players can handle M3U files; some save their playlists in this format.

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    Will I retire or break 10K?
  3. Re:Interesting name... by adrianbaugh · · Score: 5, Informative

    Eigen is a fairly well-established prefix in quantum mechanics (eigenvalues, eigenvectors, eigenstates etc.) An eigenstate is one of an infinite set of orthogonal solutions to a set of equations, an eigenvalue is a unique value (often energy) corresponding to a particular eigenstate. Thus I suspect in this case the term is supposed to mean something like "unique radio", which seems at least reasonably appropriate, if rather skewed. I suspect you're wrong about it being a comment on the state of the music industry, at least primarily. It seems like they're just using radio stations as a source of material 'cos it happens to be readily available. 'Course, the fact that it can't be much /worse/ than commercial radio is pretty ironic ;-)

    --
    "'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
    - JRR Tolkien.
  4. Re:video by KillerHamster · · Score: 3, Informative

    You could call it "AutoPr0n."

  5. Re:Interesting name... by phliar · · Score: 5, Informative
    "Eigen" in german means "essence of", "characteristic", "similar" etc. The term comes from linear algebra, not quantum mechanics. If x is a vector and A is an operator, and A x (A applied to x) has the same direction as x, then x is an eigenvector of A. For example, if the operation is "reflect in the xy plane", then any vector parallel to the z-axis is an eigenvector of the operator. The scalar that x gets scaled by is called its eigenvalue. For the reflection operator, -1 is the eigenvalue for any eigenvector. QM extended this concept to other objects like states.

    So the term eigenmusic could be used to describe the underlying defining characteristic of a music. You could say that all Britney Spears' music has the same eigenmusic.

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    Unlimited growth == Cancer.
  6. Re:Wow! by hyfe · · Score: 4, Informative

    Actually..

    PCA = Principal Component Analyses.. in essence it draws reduces the number of variables in a dataset by making up totally new ones... so in essence its just a simplification of their input.

    As to what the others are, I'm sure there are somebody here with more than my extremely meager signal processing knowledge:

    ACB = No clue
    DTW = Dynamic Time Warping
    NMF = Non-negative Matrix Factorization

    --
    "" How about taking the safety labels off everything, and let the stupidity-problem solve itself? """
  7. wonderful organized noise is good, try Aphex Twin by gasgesgos · · Score: 3, Informative

    Aphex Twin's music has done this for me. At first it just sounds like crappy noise randomly generated, but then you just "get it"...

    Aphex Twin's music spans all forms of electronic music, Selected Ambient Works Vol. 2 is an incredibly WONDERFUL bedtime album, while Drukqs is a great album while working... There's something about the almost chaotic aspect of it that keeps my mind focused.

    It's tough to go back to listening to mainstream radio after experiencing music that changes a person's perspective.

    To anyone who ignores/avoids ambient music, or music like most of the Aphex Twin library, I give the same advice, just keep listening, and wait... Eventually, it'll just click, and you win.