Better than MP3?
Posted: Wed Apr 02, 2008 11:59 pm
Intersting article on a new way of storing music files:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/cmp/20080402/tc_cmp/207001130
http://news.yahoo.com/s/cmp/20080402/tc_cmp/207001130
Sounds like MIDI, and realtime physical modelling?
Has anyone physically modelled individual pianos (Steinway, Boesendorfer, Bechstein, or even cheap and cheerful uprights, etc.)?
The other benchmark is the human voice. Currently I guess Vocaloid is the closest, although this still uses extensive sampling, and still sounds like an over-autotuned model.
I think we're rather a good distance from synthesising convincing vocals and piano!
You'd need a damn fast computer to model every nuance of vocals, the backing, the instruments, the whole mix, the effects/processing, mastering, everything in realtime. The expressive data stream would probably end up requiring more bandwidth than an MP3 download!
Otherwise the concept reminds me a bit of old skool "tracker" sequencers, from the Amiga, etc., which expressively played optimised samples and could easily fit on a 860k floppy disk along with game data, etc. The sampling/optimisation was an art in itself, though. But it was still just that, manipulating samples, not physical modelling.