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Scratching MP3s with a real turntable
Em writes "Wired News spotted these guys and their cool idea for making real turntables scratch and mix MP3s. Plug your Technics into your BeOS machine and scratch with their special vinyl. They map the 'record' to your MP3 file. I reckon I'd buy BeOS for this. " Jeez-combine this with the audio equipment we got yesterday, and Rob and I might cut a record. There's a disturbing thought. Someone alert DJ Shadow to this-I want the new album to come out soon.
The ever-fabulous M. Nelisson is currently developing a CDDA filesystem driver for the BeOS that will allow you to do similarly crazy things with the CD in your CD-ROM drive. Play multiple CA tracks at one time from the same CD in the same drive, play them backwards (400% pitch control) in Soundplay, mix two or more CD tracks together, not to mention drag&drop to extract DA right from the filesystem. Currently it's in its third beta I think, and even on my old-ass 2x results were OK.
I admit I didn't believe it when Be went with thise whole "Media OS" schtick, but now... I'll be surprised if they don't own all of the audio market in short order.
Ok, here's my idea for an MP3 extension, that I don't think anyone's gotten around to coding yet. There's one semi-related plugin for winamp, but it's not quite there.
First, maintain some timing information about all of your MP3s: beats per minute, and a 'reference beat' offset time that indicates a time offset from the start of the track that the first 'beat' occurs. Now, the beat through a track is not constant, so for beatmixing purposes we'll probably need two 'reference beats', one near the start and one near the end. No need to perform realtime waveform analysis to try to figure out the beat, we can precalculate it or set it manually once.
Next, plug all that info into a database. Point your MP3 player at the database.
Now, as we approach the end of a given track, we start playing another MP3 with a 'compatible' bpm (we can set some sort of difference threshhold), matching the reference beats. Then, just crossfade from one track to the next. We can 'crossfade' the playback speed of the two tracks to compensate for any discrepancy in the bpm, as well.
Viola! Perfect, automated beatmixing.
Of course, there's lots of opportunity to add manual control, the crossfade and track selection to start with. No need to make the DJs feel like they're out of a job.
-- Eric