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Topic: Most accurate BPM Counter (Read 25425 times) previous topic - next topic
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Most accurate BPM Counter

Hi - I've just used the (free) MixMeister BPM analyzer (http://www.mixmeister.com/bpmdownload.htm) to analyze and tag my entire collection of MP3s. I find that the results are about 80% accurate.

Does anyone know if there is a more accurate program around? Are the algorithms in use similar or will something like PCDJ provide more accurate results.

Also, I find that in 11 of the 2700 mp3's, MixMeister BPM Analyzer 'removed' the album art. Anybody else experience this?

Rgds,

Most accurate BPM Counter

Reply #1 –
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Hi - I've just used the (free) MixMeister BPM analyzer (http://www.mixmeister.com/bpmdownload.htm) to analyze and tag my entire collection of MP3s. I find that the results are about 80% accurate.

Does anyone know if there is a more accurate program around? Are the algorithms in use similar or will something like PCDJ provide more accurate results.

Also, I find that in 11 of the 2700 mp3's, MixMeister BPM Analyzer 'removed' the album art. Anybody else experience this?
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=233284"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

I have not had it remove album art, but then all my tags are known to be 100% accurate as I always erase them completely from downloaded material and retag using known good tools. Either that or I ripped them myself, in which I do the same thing.

However, yes, it's inaccurate as heck in a lot of cases. On anything between about 80-160 BPM, it's okay. Below 80 BPM, it can't seem to detect it. I had a song that I know the BPM was about 64 which it detected as 122. Big difference. Still, it's as good as any other automatic BPM counter I've tried. Different methods are inaccurate in different ways, appearantly.

Most accurate BPM Counter

Reply #2 –
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However, yes, it's inaccurate as heck in a lot of cases. On anything between about 80-160 BPM, it's okay. Below 80 BPM, it can't seem to detect it.


Same thing here. I'm using PCDJ and mostly MixMeister BPM analyzer. They give me very similar results, only on some tracks I've found a difference of +-10 bpm.

I think not a single song has been tagged as below 79 bpm. In the upper range everything is around 160-170. I can imagine that extremes bpm (low or high) are difficult to detect.

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I had a song that I know the BPM was about 64 which it detected as 122. Big difference.
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=233288"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]


I've read on PCDJ foums that sometimes you can end up with twice as fast BPM count. If you know a song is slow but the auto BPM counter detect it as fast BPM, just divide it by two to have the correct value 

Most accurate BPM Counter

Reply #3 –
is there anything else similar to mixmeister's BPM analyser - i.e. free, and analyzes BPM only? (you know, for a second opinion...!) :-)

Most accurate BPM Counter

Reply #4 –
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I've read on PCDJ foums that sometimes you can end up with twice as fast BPM count. If you know a song is slow but the auto BPM counter detect it as fast BPM, just divide it by two to have the correct value 
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=233344"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Yeah, I know that's possible. Essentially you can detect a half beat as being the best BPM match if you're not searching low enough.

You pretty much have a range of values that you check for the best match. The wider the range, the longer it takes. So there's some upper and lower limit to all automatic BPM detection methods, I think. If the real value is outside the range, the best fit within the range may be double the real value.

It's a complicated problem, sure enough.

Most accurate BPM Counter

Reply #5 –
Asking for the "most accurate bpm analyzer" is like asking for the "most accurate wind velocity meter."

In a good, steady wind, all the instruments will report the same, but if the wind is light and jumping around, sometimes you'll get one reading and sometimes you'll get another.

Same with music.  So what you probably really want is not an "accurate" analyzer, but rather one that maybe has some tunable filters on the front end, or maybe does some averaging.  The drawbacks there would be loss of the batch mode in the first case, and extended analysis time in the second.

The wider the bandwidth of the front end of a servo loop[1] the more susceptible it is to harmonics and subharmonics, hence the reading of 124 on a signal that should have been 64.

I think the best we're going to be able to do is to emulate SSaha and let MixMeister do its best, then go back and manually tag the exceptions.

I was thinking about a tool to help that.  The DJ programs usually have a manual bpm tool where you click on a button in time to the beat and it reads out the BPM.  It would be nice to have a standalone program consisting of one button and one readout.  It would be small and you could just listen to your music and on songs without BPM you could click along and get the BPM.  If the programmer were really clever, he would figure out a way to read the Winamp/Foobar window title bar and get the name of the file being played and write out the tag automatically.  Yeah, that's the ticket... 

-- Rick

[1] That's one way these things work (another is fourier analysis) -- they scan across a frequency band and try to lock.
------- Rick -------
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Most accurate BPM Counter

Reply #6 –
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It would be nice to have a standalone program consisting of one button and one readout.  It would be small and you could just listen to your music and on songs without BPM you could click along and get the BPM.
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=233414"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

There's no shortage of programs that do exactly this. Search google for BPM Counter and that sort of little program will be the first 5 programs you find. Whether the program has the ability to write ID3 tags is about 50/50-ish. The automatic counter program is relatively new, by comparison.

The problem is how do you know when the count is off? If you essentially have to go through all the music yourself, then the whole point of having the automatic counter is lost. I admit that 80% is better than nothing though.

Most accurate BPM Counter

Reply #7 –
is there any way to force mixmeister bpm analyzer to scan a wider range of bpm's? i find that it doesnt detect beats below 80 bpm.

Most accurate BPM Counter

Reply #8 –
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The problem is how do you know when the count is off? If you essentially have to go through all the music yourself, then the whole point of having the automatic counter is lost. I admit that 80% is better than nothing though.[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=233417"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Well, it would be a pain in the neck to manually listen to each of your 5,000 tracks to ensure that the BPM was correct, but hopefully, you're going to use the BPM for some purpose like playing all your fast songs, or some such.  So if you were listening to fast songs and suddenly one of the songs didn't fit, if you could correct it with a button click it would be better than nothing.  Eventually you'd have the BPM corrected on all the tracks you ever listen to... (Sorry about the run-on sentences.)
------- Rick -------
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Most accurate BPM Counter

Reply #9 –
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So if you were listening to fast songs and suddenly one of the songs didn't fit, if you could correct it with a button click it would be better than nothing. [{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]


Actually that's what I do  If I'm listening to 'slow' tempo songs, but I found that one song it's too fast for that, I correct that. I must admit that I'm quite happy with the method I talk about in [a href="http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=24669&hl=mood]here[/url], I can then use a custom shuffle control in foobar to emulate a 'feels like current song': -artist|-album|+tempo (you can eventually add +genre). The 'auto-mixes' are better that what I would thought 

Most accurate BPM Counter

Reply #10 –
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The 'auto-mixes' are better that what I would thought  [a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=233695"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

That's an interesting idea.  Is there someplace on here where people post playlists?  I'd be interested in seeing someone's "toe tapping" playlist, for instance, or maybe your "dreamy" one.

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[span style='font-size:8pt;line-height:100%']Moderation: removed long off-topic signature.[/span]
------- Rick -------
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Most accurate BPM Counter

Reply #11 –
Quote from: Otto42 on
If you essentially have to go through all the music yourself, then the whole point of having the automatic counter is lost. I admit that 80% is better than nothing though.

Any progress on the accuracy of automatic bpm counters?

Most accurate BPM Counter

Reply #12 –
...and more importantly is there an open source BPM Analyzer anybody know?

Most accurate BPM Counter

Reply #13 –
and one that also works with FLAC and other file types other than mp3 (ie mixmeister)

Most accurate BPM Counter

Reply #14 –
Shameless plug for my foobar2000 bpm component  It's pretty customisable, for example you can set the bpm range from 50-120, or 100-200 etc, and fiddle with the nitty gritty algorithm settings to fine tune things. I intend to keep adding to it in terms of different bpm algorithms and other features to make it as accurate as can be.

Most accurate BPM Counter

Reply #15 –
I'm curious what a BPM counter would come up with for a track with tempo changes ("Supper's Ready" by Genesis comes to mind).

Most accurate BPM Counter

Reply #16 –
It'll likely find the bpm which features longest throughout the track. For example, Tim Exile's Family Galaxy goes from 90bpm to 116bpm, and then upto 180bpm. foo_bpm detects the song as 116bpm because it's the most common bpm throughout the track. I imagine other bpm scanners would behave similarly.

Most accurate BPM Counter

Reply #17 –
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Also, I find that in 11 of the 2700 mp3's, MixMeister BPM Analyzer 'removed' the album art. Anybody else experience this?


I've been using it to BPM my collection, but it does screw up the tags in about 10-15% of my files - it removes certain tags (genre and album artist by mine); so I'm thinking it may not support ID3v2 very well. UPDATE: I found this info, which seems to explain the problem well:

http://forums.mp3tag.de/lofiversion/index.php/t8290.html

Most accurate BPM Counter

Reply #18 –
If you register (free) on the  Beatport site you can download something called Beatport Sync.

This is a cut down version of the industry standard DJ software Traktor. You cannot cue (hence it's free)  but it does an excellent job of comparing two tunes and beatmatching them automatically. There is a visual display of both the bpm and waveform and you can vary the pitch at will manually.

You don't mention what genres your music collection mainly comprises but it is entirely possible that 80% of your collection does not have a constant bpm throughout anyway. Sometimes it might be intentional and not down to the drummer getting it wrong. Sometimes.