Managing hundreds of thousands of audio files can get messy over time. Sometimes, speech, sound effects, and other types of audio get mixed up with the music that you want to focus on for analysis. 

To streamline the process of tagging and reduce unnecessary errors, we developed an Audio Type classifier to ‘pre-sort’ audio files into various categories. This keeps your catalog organized and prevents contamination of your music data.

Let’s take a look at our categories!

MUSIC

Definition: A track consisting of a pattern of organic or synthesized sounds with perceptible intent, designed to give pleasure and communicate emotions and/or ideas to listeners.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmOLtTGvsbM

Example: Music

STEMS

Definition: Full-length tracks that collectively contain the musical constituents of a full piece of Music, grouped by an audible logic (instrument, timbre, frequency band etc).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQ-gfb6nUus

Example: Stem - Drums

STING

Definition: A short musical segment (<60s) featuring one or more complete musical phrase(s).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvtN_WxuSic

Example: Sting

SHORT STING

Definition: A short musical segment (<20s) featuring one or more complete musical phrase(s).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_1KUi9zWUc

Example: Short Sting

SFX

Definition: Natural or synthesized sounds (other than speech or music)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ixnf7F3xw_A

Example: SFX

ONE-SHOT

Definition: An audio file that consists of no more than two transients.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hrb2ngAd15o

Example: One-Shot

DRONE

Definition: An audio file that primarily consists of sustained sound(s). Some music may have drone-like qualities and fall into both categories.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRg93KUVBII

Example: Drone

SPEECH

Definition: A recording of intelligible speech by any number of individual entities, in existing or invented languages, with no perceptible musical intent (organization of pitch and/or rhythm).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ka6_3TJcCkA

Example: Speech

OTHER

Definition: Any audio file that does not fit into any of the above categories.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNN7iTA57jM

Example: Other

Our Type Classifier is available in our Tag, Search, and API solutions.

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