Musical Instrument Acoustic Comparison

CST499: Computer Science Capstone

Team Members: Bryan Aguiar, Emerald Kunkle, Trenton Fengel

Date: 06/19/2022
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Executive Summary of Proposal

The purpose of this project is to provide musicians, audiophiles, and audio engineers an

audio comparison application. The main goal for this project is to empower musicians to make

sound decisions when purchasing instruments/musical peripherals based on tonal preferences.

This will be achieved by the main objective–to build out side-by-side graph comparisons of the

frequency spectrums, amplitudes, and spectograms of two instruments.

Musicians. Audiophiles, and audio engineers are a wide group of people with varying

diversity. According to the American Federation of Musicians, they represent nearly 80,000

musicians in the United States and Canada. The count refers only to professional musicians that

are part of this union, but the amount may be greater due to the open availability of music. Using

the audiophile subreddit, we can see that there are at least 1.8 million users. Musicians and

people who appreciate music can be anywhere in the world, so it is important to develop a

solution that makes people with more specific requirements able to make decisions that suit their

tastes. We expect users to be able to take this app into music stores and be able to record while

shopping.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAGE

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ........................................................................................................... i

PART I

● PROJECT NAME AND DESCRIPTION ......................................................................... 1

● ISSUE ................................................................................................................................ 1

● SOLUTION ....................................................................................................................... 2

● EVIDENCE OF NEED ..................................................................................................... 2

● PROJECT GOALS AND OBJECTIVES .......................................................................... 3

● ENVIRONMENTAL SCAN ............................................................................................. 3

PART II:

● STAKEHOLDERS ............................................................................................................ 4

● ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS ....................................................................................... 5

● LEGAL CONSIDERATIONS ........................................................................................... 5

PART III

● TIMELINE/BUDGET ....................................................................................................... 6

● RISKS AND DEPENDENCIES ........................................................................................ 7

● PRELIMINARY USABILITY TEST PLAN .................................................................... 7

● FINAL DELIVERABLES ................................................................................................. 8

● APPROACH/METHODOLOGY ...................................................................................... 8

REFERENCE PAGE ..................................................................................................................... 9

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PART I

PROJECT NAME AND DESCRIPTION:

Musical Instrument Acoustic Comparison

Our team plans on developing a mobile application that allows musicians to analyze and

compare the sonic characteristics of two different instruments. Once the user finds an instrument

they want to analyze, they will record themselves playing a chord or a few notes. Next, they will

record themselves on another instrument playing the same thing they did in the first recording.

This will allow the app to make a proper comparison of two instruments both playing the same

thing. The user will then be able to view side-by-side comparisons of the frequency spectrums,

the amplitudes, and the spectrograms of both instruments. The musician can then save the audio

information which can be used for later comparisons.

ISSUE:

Subtle Differences of Musical Instruments

When purchasing a musical instrument, an experienced musician will use several criteria

to determine whether or not an instrument is high quality. One of the qualities a musician looks

for is a quick attack time. The attack time is the amount of time it takes for an instrument to

reach full volume after a string is plucked or bowed. Instruments with a quick attack time have a

more responsive feel and are more desirable. Another quality musicians look for in an instrument

is overtones. Overtones are higher frequencies that can be heard above the fundamental

frequency. Instruments that are rich with overtones sound bright and clear whereas instruments

that lack overtones can sound dull. While sometimes these qualities can be heard, sometimes it
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can be hard to distinguish the differences between two instruments, especially if the instruments

are close in price.

SOLUTION:

Technology-Aided Acoustic Comparison

The human ear can have difficulties differentiating between subtle discrepancies between

two instruments, unlike the objective analysis of technology. By measuring the quantitative

properties of both instruments, our app can help musicians make confident decisions when

shopping. Common acoustic qualities will be displayed side-by-side, such as frequency,

amplitude, time-domain, and more.

EVIDENCE OF NEED

The project is needed because it has the potential to optimize the decision making process

for musicians looking to purchase an instrument that meets certain criteria. This project will also

be useful to audiophiles trying to make informed decisions on audio peripherals. The range of

difference that two of the same instruments can have makes comparison paramount, lest the

consumer overpays for an instrument ill-suited for their needs. Music is a hobby loved by many

as made apparent by the 30 million users on the Music Subreddit and nearly 2 million users on

the Audiophile subreddit. With millions of dedicated music appreciators in the world, there is a

huge market for musical instruments and music-related peripherals. Musical instruments have a

myriad of nuances that even the most well-trained ear struggles to hear; those struggles can be

alleviated via technology with only a few taps on their phone.

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PROJECT GOALS AND OBJECTIVES

Goals:

The goals of this project are to:

● Empower musicians to make sound decisions on instrument choices

○ Enable audiophiles to make more informed choices on music related peripherals

● Illustrate the minute differences between two instruments

● Allow users to access graphs at future times

Objectives:

● Build out side-by-side graph comparisons of the frequency spectrums, amplitudes, and

spectograms of two instruments

● Accept and analyze at least two audio files at a time

● Allow users to login in to their account using OAuth 2.0 authorization with Google

services to store graphs.

ENVIRONMENTAL SCAN

Upon completing an environmental scan, there exists many different sound analyzing

applications. Searching the google app store with the terms ‘Sound Spectrum Analysis’ or any

variation of those terms, leads users to the Spectroid App. At the time of writing, Spectroid has

4.6 stars based on 11 thousand reviews and sitting at over 1 million downloads. Other apps

recommended are as follows: Audizr - Spectrum Analyzer, Advanced Spectrum Analyzer PRO,

Sound Spectrum Analyzer and the list goes on, but none of the apps share the same success as

Spectroid. On further review of all applications, a trend appears where only real-time analysis is
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allowed for one instrument at a time. Spectroid, for example, analyzes real-time audio to

determine the frequency domain of the recording sound.

The Musical Instrument Acoustic Comparison app will differentiate from Spectroid and

other similar applications. The first difference is that our application will attempt to utilize four

different parameters for our sound analysis. Another difference, as you can see from our title, is

our application will provide a comparison between two similar instruments and return the results

of the comparison. The con to the approach we are taking is that it makes analyzing real-time

audio nigh impossible because we will be taking audio samples from two different instruments.

Our team believes this approach will allow users to record different samples while at a music

store, and make the best informed decision based on their needs.

PART II

STAKEHOLDERS

This application will be beneficial to musicians and audio designers who seek to identify more

fine-tune audio details that the average human ear has trouble distinguishing. Musicians

sometimes take years to develop their familiarity with an instrument’s individual unique sonic

qualities, but with the aid of technology, the ability to assess the sonic characteristics of an

instrument will be drastically improved. For this reason, people established in both the fields of

music and audio design stand to benefit the most from this product, rather than novice musicians

and designers.
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ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS

Mobile Applications have one obstacle to entry: Prospective users must have an android-based

phone with access to the internet. The necessity of owning a phone may impact low-income

individuals. However, programs such as the Federal Lifeline Assistance program can distribute

phones to the low-income population for free. Our specific application does have an optional

requirement of requiring instruments for sound analysis which may be difficult for disadvantaged

users, but the app would still be functional by using any saved recordings.

One ethical concern that comes to mind would be the accessibility for the blind. A lot of

smartphone applications that provide accessibility for the blind allows for text-to-speech

descriptions of many visual images or icons. As we will be comparing statistics between two

audio files, a lot of our comparisons will be heavily visual-based, and thus difficult to rely to

blind users. One possible work around would be to relay only the numerical differences between

the two files to the user through text-to-speech, if they require so.

LEGAL CONSIDERATIONS

One possible legal challenge may be the storage of a user’s audio and recordings. This could

potentially conflict with copyright laws if any of our users have a copyright to any audio

uploaded on the app. No other user will be able to hear or access another’s audio files, however

the storing them itself could potentially be an issue. One work around could possibly be a terms

and conditions page that a user must accept in order to use our app, and through said terms and

conditions we can gain formal permission to store any copyrighted material they want to upload

onto the app.

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Part III

TIMELINE

Layout Prototyping/Initial Acoustic-Visual Conversion

For the layout, we will focus on visual app concept layout, wireframe, and lo-fi
Week 1
interactive user interface. For acoustic-visual conversion, we will gather libraries

and start the process of translating an audio file into analytical and graphical data.

Database Management/Backend Development

As soon as we finish our interactive prototype and learn the necessary tools to get

started, we will work on our backend. We will be writing an algorithm that can
Week 2
analyze pre-recorded audio samples and gather useful information such as

frequency spectrum and amplitude over a period of time. The application will

then display visualizations of the data. We will also implement audio recording.

GUI Development/Frontend Development

For GUI develop, we will continue off of our concepts from week 1, and finalize
Week 3
the functional app frontend and GUI.

Backend-Frontend Integration/OAuth 2.0 Authentication

We will focus this week on integrating our backend and frontend, and resolving
Week 4
any conflicts that arise in linking them. In addition, we will be adding OAuth 2.0

to log in to the app.

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Testing & Evaluation

Any pending unresolved issues will be cleared, and the app and code will be
Week 5
polished and cleaned-up. We will proceed to test with the necessary musicians for

utility and ease, and take in any feedback to make minor alterations.

>>

RISKS AND DEPENDENCIES

A primary risk is being able to transform the recorded audio in Android Studio. The

audio needs to be first converted to Pulse-Code Modulation (PCM) sample, which android studio

has built in libraries for. The issue comes in an available Fast Fourier Transform algorithm for

Android Studio, which is needed to get our data points for our graphs from the PCM sample.

Luckily, Android Studio is not the only method to construct android applications and we can use

javascript libraries to help out.

PRELIMINARY USABILITY TEST PLAN

The useability of our app will be tested directly with adult musicians to access the utility

and ease of use. In the beginning stages, our usability will be guided by our group member

Bryan, who has personal experience as a professional musician. In the later stages, however, we

will have an additional 3-5 professional adult musicians to test and give feedback to our

application, in addition to providing insight on what they need most.

Along the road, our mentor will verify the usability and test the audio comparison

functions himself, and will guide us on the usability as he sees fit.

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FINAL DELIVERABLES

Our final deliverable will be a Javascript-based android app that will be available on the

Google Play Store. It will be free to download, and integrated with a backend server to store

users’ audio files.

APPROACH/METHODOLOGY

Per the recommendation of our industry client, we will be using the agile methodology as

an approach to this project. We plan to keep track of our storyboard elements using pivotal

tracker. Github will be our main resource for version control and assuring all updates are checked

by members. As for code/IDE, we initially were going to use Android Studio, but found that we

can use the IONIC framework with REACT. Being able to use react is more beneficial to use

because it is what we as a group have used most recently. As for research, we need to ensure that

we know how to receive audio into an application and be able to convert it in to a sample and

transform that sample into usable data. Google OAuth 2.0 will be used as our primary login to

store data for future users.

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REFERENCES

About Community. reddit. (2008, September 15). Retrieved June 18, 2022, from

\https://www.reddit.com/r/audiophile/

Ink, S. (2021, February 25). About AFM. American Federation of Musicians. Retrieved June 18,

2022, from https://www.afm.org/about/about-afm/

Lifeline support for affordable communications. Federal Communications Commission. (2022.

March 29). Retrieved June 18, 2022, from https://www.fcc.gov/lifeline-consumers

Reinke, C. (2018, August 6). Spectroid. Google. Retrieved June 18, 2022, from

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.intoorbit.spectrum&hl=en_US&gl=US

Shu, Hannah. (2022). Hannah Shu: Analyzing the Acoustics of Violins Fast. YouTube. Retrieved

June 18, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbkxRO7TRu4.