Engineering Sound

By Mateo Eusebio, Ethan Fonarev,

Daniel Bazikian, and Diego Gutierrez
Table of Contents:
Defining the Problem

Searching for Solutions

Evaluating Solutions

Testing

Conclusion
Defining the Problem:

Digital music production is a difficult and costly art form.

By extension, it is very inaccessible to most people.

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Current Solutions:

-Free programs like Garageband offer a medium on which to produce music

-Websites like epidemicsound.com and splice.com offer purchasable, digital

sound packs

- Mp3 converter softwares to sample and clip audio files

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Why These Solutions are Unreliable

-Free programs like Garageband offer a basic set of sounds that, when used
by everyone, make it hard for musicians to create their own, unique sound

-Current prices for sound packs are too expensive

-Mp3 conversion brings up the risk of viruses and lower quality sound

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Research Conducted

-We created a survey and sent it out to a sample group of 100+ participants

-We received 100+ responses and compiled that data

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Research Results - Music Appreciation
-94.2% of people say music improves their quality of life

-52.4% of people can listen to entire albums in one sitting

-68.9% of people are interested in a product that will make music production
easier and more accessible to them

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Research Results - Music Production
-64% of people rarely produce music

-67% of people have some experience producing music

-32% of people are uncomfortable with music production

-38% of people are somewhat comfortable with music production

-54% of people are uncomfortable with using physical equipment to produce

music

-28.2% are somewhat comfortable with using physical equipment to produce

music
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Research Results - Availability to Equipment
-95% of participants have a computer at home

-70% of participants have at least one musical instrument at home

-34% of participants have a microphone at home

-1% have a turntable

-1% have a MIDI keyboard

-1% have an AMP

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Research Analysis
Music Appreciation:

● A majority of people genuinely enjoy and appreciate music and would like to have a product
that allows them to make music themselves. This shows us that there is a market interest.

Music Production:

● A decent majority of people have some experience in music production, but are still relatively
uncomfortable with it. This shows that our solution will be useful to people.

Availability to Equipment:

● Most people have access to a computer. Due to a minority of people owning microphones, a
majority of people don’t have access to producing sounds and exporting them into a digital
format. This widespread inaccessibility adds value to our potential product.
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Research Analysis cont.
Summary:

- There are many people who are inexperienced and do not have the
hardware for music production.
- Our market is created with the general naccessibility to the reliable
production of digital sound.
- Add to that the expensive and risky alternatives highlighted prior, which
creates this market need for a means of producing music cheaply and
reliably.

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Requirements Specified
What we were looking for:

● In order to directly solve the problem, we need to create a product that is, first and
foremost, accessible to an inexperienced audience.

● In order to actually sell the product, we also need to understand the market appeal
for it by comparing its viability to other market competitors.
Requirements Specified cont.
Accessibility - 33%

Affordability - 13%

Uniqueness - 16.3%

Utility - 5.4%

Market - 8.3%

Market Appeal - 17%

Simplicity - 7%
*The importance of these aspects have been weighted as shown by the percentage points.* 13
Defining Possible Solutions
● Music Maker App

● Digital Sound Packs

● Physical Sound Kits

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Evaluating Possible Solutions

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Choosing Possible Solutions
- As shown in the requirements slide, each individual in the group gave
each aspect of our product a value to decide which part of our product
was most important to each of us.
- This allows us to make a choice on which concept we should go with
based on what we value in a product and what we think will make it sell in
the marketplace.
- Overall, accessibility received the highest percentage of values, which
means that we all believe accessibility to be the most important aspect of
our product, and that accessibility should be the main selling point of our
product.

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Choosing Possible Solutions cont.
- All three concepts on the decision matrix had weighted values based on
how much each aspect correlated with the idea. For example, uniqueness
has a larger weight on the Digital Sound Kit than on the Music Maker idea
because a Music Making program isn't as unique of an idea, as there are
many DAW programs out there.

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Our Solution
- With all of that in mind, the Digital Sound Kit solution/idea best fits our
goals for our design. We value accessibility the most, and since it can be
accessed and downloaded from a website it is pretty accessible.
- From another angle, it fills the niche of being an accessible entry to music
production for anyone who is interested in it, as they can download our
sounds and use them on any DAW they prefer.
Prototyping
- With our solution in mind, we began to think of tests we could run to
create a prototype website. These tests are described in detail in our Test
Plan Set Up document.
- Experiment 1: Account Coding
- Testing to see whether or not we could code our website to have user accounts and
logins so they can have a more personalized experience on it.
- Experiment 2: Transactional Coding
- A test run to investigate if we could code VISA and PayPal as payment methods into our
website in order to yield profit and distribute the sounds safely and efficiently.
- Experiment 3: Download Tests
- The final test, which consisted of downloading our sounds into different formats in order
to make sure it functioned properly.
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Lab Test Setup
Goal: to devise a set of experiments with which to test the functionality of our
product

Things to test:

- Website functionality
- Sound quality
- Sound file integrity

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Empirical Procedures
Why this is important: Scientific method relies on empiricism.

Labs:

- Transactional Systems (Website functionality)

- Sound Tests (Sound quality)

- Download Tests (Sound integrity)

Transactional
Functionality
Transactional Functionality
Hypothesis: If we use the redux program from Python, our transactions will
work.

Procedure:

- Create mock store items

- Set up VISA/Paypal accounts
- Perform primary actions on mock items (Add to cart, remove from cart)
- Perform checkout feature
- Perform transaction
Transactional Functionality - Code
class Item:
def __init__(self, name, price):
self.name = name
self.price = price
def getPrice(self):
return self.price
def getName(self):
return self.name
class Cart:
def __init__(self, list):
self.list = []
def addItem(self, item):
self.list.append(self.list)
def getTotal(self): c.addItem(item3)
total = 0 print "You have %i items in your cart
for item in self.list: for a total of $%.02f" %(c.getNumItems(),
name, price = item # or price = item[1] c.getTotal())
total = total + price c.removeItem(item3)
print "You have %i items in your cart
def getNumItems(self): for a total of $%.02f" % (c.getNumItems(),
count = 0 for c in range(self.list): count = self.list + c.getTotal()) main()
1 return count
-Courtesy of Pymbook.com
def removeItem(self, item) #removes the item
from the cart's item list
def main():
item1 = Item("Sound1", .69)
item2 = Item("Sound2", 2.39)
item3 = Item("Sound3", .99)
c = Cart() c.addItem(item1)
c.addItem(item2)
Transactional Functionality - Results
Website functionality results:

Transactional functionality results:

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Sound Quality
Sound Quality
Hypothesis: When audio undergoes gain and volume increase, sound quality
will diminish.

Procedure:

- Create tracks which will house the audio for testing

- Run pre-test analysis of the workstation
- Begin by increasing gain to about “5” on the amplifiers of each track
- Play the length of all audio in tracks and analyze peak levels (document
any overloading headspace)
- Bring gain to “10” and repeat step 4
- Open the master EQ and play the length of the audio in the tracks. Note
peaking and placement of sound waves to determine tonal purity.
Test Results
● Upon completion of Step 3 peak level went to -3.7
○ No notable overloading - volume neutrality undisturbed
● After completing Step 5 there was a noticeable difference when gain was
put to max. Peak level reached 1.3, surpassing the level 5 gain test. After
analysis in the Master EQ, large peaks were seen from 75 - 100Hz.
●

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Download Tests(Audio File Formats)
Hypothesis:
All audio files will retain the same file size (bytes) after file conversion.
We will calculate and document the file size because we want all files across every system to be a similar size to one
another while retaining the quality. The same kind of file size and quality reflects a proper conversion.
Independent Variable: The file’s format.
Dependent Variable: The size of the file.
Control: The starting file that we will convert.

Procedure:
1. Record a set of basic audio clips
2. Upload the Django redux program to the website (function explained in experiment 1)
3. Upload the audio clips to the website
4. From a Mac Computer, download the audio file and see if the file is compatible with the system
5. Repeat steps 1-4 with the Chromebook and Windows computers
6. For the incompatible computers, convert the downloaded files to a compatible format and upload them to the website.
7. Clear all systems of those files and download them again
8. Integrate each file into each OS’s respective music production program and document the quality of the sound.
9. Document the file sizes of each sound.
Results
Conclusion:
MP3s are smaller than WAV and AIF files because they are compressed using lossy compression. Lossy compression means that
some information is lost when the files are made smaller. High-quality MP3s are less compressed; therefore, they discard less
data, but they are usually larger in size than lower-quality MP3s. We converted our youtube audio clip to a lossless MP3(meaning
it didn’t decrease in quality), and then converted the MP3’s to the WAV and AIFF which among MP3 are the most popular file
formats for audio in the music production industry. Our website will allow access for one to convert the audio to the format of
their choice but we will indicate the one that takes the least data while still being lossless. Our MP3 conversion will be of higher
quality than most but if audio quality is the biggest priority users can go with other forms of file formats which take up more
bytes.

Byte Size MP3(Lossless) WAV AIFF

Sound Clip 1 715 KB 5.11 MB 5.11 MB

(30sec)

Sound Clip 2 (7 sec) 164 KB 1.14 MB 588.05 KB

The Advantages Our Product Provides
● Easier access to music production tools
○ Unlike other VST/Sound Pack providers, we charge a very small amount for quality
production resources
○ Our easy to navigate website makes file downloading/use easier than ever
● Product Diversity
○ Unlike many other providers, MEDD aims to satisfy all genres and project concepts
through our diverse library of instruments and FX
● Purchase Prices
○ We do not charge monthly for our services, making our customers’ music
production process much more affordable. All purchases are one time and aren’t
restricted to a certain payment plan.

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