Sustainable Software for Digital Music and Audio Research

The aim of this proposal is to provide a Service to support the development and use of software, data and metadata to enable high quality research in the thriving UK audio and music research community.Researchers in this area come from a wide range of backgrounds including: signal processing, electronics, computer science, music, information sciences, dance & performance, and data sonification, but have a common interest in the use of audio and music in their work. Through this project, we want to create a climate where researchers think beyond the research they are undertaking at the present, towards the impact that it could have on other researchers, but right from the start. Through helping researchers to strongly connecting their work with that of others, each will see that their work should be reusable: my research helps your research. In many of the fields within this community, researchers do not have the skills or desire to write their own code, or piece together other code, but benefit greatly from straight out of the box software. Even where they do write their own code, they work on different platforms and use a wide variety of batch and real-time environments (Matlab, Python, Max/MSP, SuperCollider, VST plugins). While there may be potentially useful software in other fields that could help them with their research, they are often not be aware of its existence, and it is often not available for the platform or environment they use.Other specific software- and data-related difficulties faced by researchers in this community include:* Software designed for legacy platforms (Sun SPARC, NeXTSTEP) and/or no longer maintained;* PhD students graduate or staff move: their web pages containing original software and/or data lost;* Code for some systems never released (not considered a priority for researchers, or code not considered ready );* Software and/or datasets in slightly different versions (due to error corrections or enhancements);* Copyright issues of datasets (e.g. audio of Beatles tracks cannot be placed on the web).The proposed Service to the UK music and audio research community will consist of several elements: * A software engineering resource to engineer cross-platform robust software from UK research prototypes; * A software tailoring programme to modify or adapt existing tools for use by other UK researchers; * A source repository with version control, to hold source code for software tools being developed in the community; * A dataset repository to hold and maintain key experimental datasets and metadata (e.g. human-generated labels); * Advice & training in the use of available software, and best practice in developing sustainable software. * Engagement and outreach to the research community and beyondAn important aspect of the Service will be planning for sustainability, so that the software developed during its lifetime, and the Service itself, can be sustained beyond the end of the funded period.

Potential beneficiaries of this project outside of the academic research community include anyone who could benefit from access to high quality software based on the latest research in audio and music. Examples from various sectors are given below. Commercial private sector: * Commercial companies designing audio equipment, through easier access to new audio research; * Musicians and sound artists, through their ability to use new research methods and processes for new creative outputs. * Computer games companies, through better access and use audio and music research outputs for improved game music and audio, or for new types of audio or music-based computer games * Hearing aid and cochlear implant manufacturers, through access to new research applicable to hearing improvement * Audio archiving companies, through access to the latest algorithms and methods for music information retrieval * Television and radio companies, through ability to use latest research in the design of new technology-based programmes Policy-makers and others in government and government agencies: * Research funders, through improved flow of research outputs to research users and other researchers, and thus more effective use of research funds; and increased across-the-board impact of research in audio and digital music * Police and security services, through access to algorithms for analysing and separating audio signals Public sector, third sector and others: * Healthcare workers who work with music and audio, such as music therapists, through new music and audio visualization tools * Museums, through software to measure and visualise acoustic properties of objects * Computing museums and digital libraries, through sharing of experiences with emulation and virtualization of software * Libraries, through improved open access to research results (including software) for the benefit of their users; and access to improved ways to catalogue and search audio and music information based on the latest research * Standards organizations, through access to high quality examples of research methods on which to based forthcoming standards * Science promotion organizations, through availability of high-quality usable research software attractive to people who may be interested in science Wider public: * People interested in exploring music or other audio recordings at home, school, college or university, using the latest research, either for educational or general interest purposes * Teachers in schools, colleges or universities who want to use research-generated software for teaching audio or music. * People such as programming hobbyists, who wish to participate in open-source research software development and maintenance, through contribution to bug fixing, upgrading, etc. of software development activities promoted by the Service. These may have an interest in audio and music, but that would not be a precursor to involvement. * Audiences of creative output involving audio and music, through availability of new creative outputs or technology facilitated by audio and digital music research Researchers employed on the project, and others undertaking training or other interaction: * Improved skills in research software development and research methodologies, which may be transferred into e.g. the commercial private sector on completion of the project