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[negopus]

I am going to explain what I expect to find in a media player in the not-so-near future that suits my tastes (I am not saying needs because a media player is an entertainment product after all). It might seem a little visionary at first, but I think that it is all made up of reasonable requests.

I prefer an (hyper)active music listening experience. Intense, but not too long. One hour at most. I really can't conceive music as a background.

I would like to listen to music, have the score and lyrics displayed in sync with music, have a MIDI file synchronized to the music and displayed as a keyboard or guitar (like Band-In-A-Box). I would like to jam along to the music on a keyboard, being able to record the performance with a MIDI timebase being automatically generated in sync with the music (something like DJ software, but much more advanced, current DJ software makes a good sync only out of techno music, it is already in difficulty with 70's disco)

I would like to see markers that highlight the track structure (verse/chorus/bridge for pop music, and so on) and also markers that highlight emotionally intense moments, markers that relate to the music style and/or arrangement. All these kind of markers would be an unvaluable tool for music students, music journalists, composers and creative people alike. I would like to quickly browse between markers, set up loops, jamming to an interesting chord sequence or rearranging the song on the fly, I would like to quickly browse to similar tracks, or tracks with similar arrangement and/or instrumentation being used, or tracks with similar chord progression.

I understand that in Japan there is already a wide karaoke market, that is addressed by hardware devices and/or online services. I don't know how much a media player would fit into this context.

I also understand that there are digital pianos, such as those from Roland, that display the score as their sequencer plays it and you can even touch the notes and hear them being played.

I would also like to see the soundcard's output displayed in real time both as an oscilloscope and as a spectrum analyzer, for a quick check of what's going on.

In conclusion, nothing that cannot already be done with single specialized products, but no end-user level product features everything together. And available with a single keypress. Of course this would have a cost, but I would be glad to spend some money just to have such a tool.

This tool would be a double edged sword. Is the world ready for these new technologies? As far I can see, the world is not really ready for new technologies.

Take the example of computers. Word processors were supposed to ease the work of writing and printing. How many ugly banners, made with a word processor and printed with a laser printer, do you see around the world? How many typos do you find in newspapers and magazines alike, that are written, with the help of word processors, by journalists who don't know how to use a spell checker.

How much self-similar music have you heard in the recent years, that is made using sequencer and sample libraries?

While I write this, I am wondering whether I am a one-of-a-kind user, an odd mixture of music lover, amateur musician, audio enthusiast engineer, or if someone else would be interested in such a tool just for his own entertaining.

Of course this is not a feature request for MC12, not even for MC13. Maybe in MC20, who knows... But this would be in the distant future. Not for the current technology level, where everybody is running after new standards, new gadgets, portable players and so on.

[urlwolf]

I agree that at least the visualization, synchonization, and "metataging" parts. Having midi, or some other (future) format that let's you do all that, is a different story. That would be a radical change not only in the player, but in the format music is recored and delivered. Have you tried matching your audio and midi collections? It has to be close to impossible.

[negopus]

First of all, thanks to urlwolf for answering. I didn’t expect this one being a topic for discussion.

After re-reading my post, I realize that my wishes for the media player of the future fall into two categories.

1) Features for the general public:
- Synchronization (beat detection – as in DJ software - and generation of a sync timebase)
- Meta tags, with quick browsing between them
- Looping
- Tech-oriented visualizations (oscilloscope, spectrum analyzer, see below for a combined log spectrum/musical keyboard display, a running spectrogram would be nice too)

2) Features for amateur musicians (maybe geared towards the implementation of the ultimate entertainment/didactic keyboard):
- synchronization of MIDI and audio of the same track
- MIDI recording of live performance
- synchronized visualization of the score to the audio track (with meta tags being displayed too)

The conversion of audio to MIDI (or to a score in a more general sense) is an art, or at least a discipline, by itself.

Reading another thread (dealing with Media Center under Linux http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=29475.0) I browsed to the site of a company that makes a cross-platform library, and from there I found out that a program, Transcribe! http://www.seventhstring.com/xscribe/version7.html, exists that does just help a person to transcribe music. It displays the (log) spectrum of a selected part of the audio waveform over the representation of a musical keyboard, with pitches aligned between the two. This is a great suggestion for a new kind of visualization. Such a display in real-time, although not immediately useful, would be great-looking. With names of the higher-energy notes being highlighted. The correct use of such a display, however, is a trial-and-error in very short audio loops.

Transcribe! is not an automated tool for converting audio to MIDI at all, but it helps people a lot in doing that. After all, converting an audio track to its score is something that an amateur musician might like to do (or a professional musician has to do as a job). To an amateur musician, this is entertainment in itself, besides being the source for almost unlimited creative inspiration. It should not be automated at all.

Also, there are people who make a living creating professional-grade MIDI files. With MIDI files, I think there could to be a lot of legal issues dealing with intellectual property, as having the score to a track and being able to use sequencers and synthesizers means being able to make a reasonable reproduction of the track itself. But it requires human intervention, it is not easy and dumb-proof as downloading an MP3 file, so the issue does not seem to be major.

I understand that the issue of syncing audio to MIDI is a really big one, I just thrown it in as a wish, no more. Features for amateur musicians (point 2) are really too advanced, and I expect to see then in a media player (if ever) in the not-too-near future. Features for the general public (point 1), however, are feasible, so I’m going to suggest them as improvements for MC12.

[jgreen]

opus--
I agree, a full-featured suite of audio tools for playback, analysis, editing and tagging--Pro Tools on steroids.  There are enough open-source apps out there (Audacity, GIMP, etc) that jriver could accomplish this realatively painlessly.  This might be their "professional" version.

  I don't know if there would be widespread consumer demand for such a suite, so the price might have to compensate.  Would you pay $100 for the pro version?  I would.  What about $200?  For everytihing you ever wanted in an AV package?

[negopus]

I don't know if there would be widespread consumer demand for such a suite, so the price might have to compensate.  Would you pay $100 for the pro version?  I would.  What about $200?  For everytihing you ever wanted in an AV package?

Yes, I would pay $100 or even $200 to have all these features in a single package.