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Audio Searching

Audio searching today is also based on the idea of appended text. Typically audio clips or
audio files are appended with a text description, so that the user can query by the appended
description. This enables one to search on the text description of Mozart’s Symphonies and
get back the music file, but does not able one to search on all music dealing primarily pianos
and/or violins.

The searching of audio is an interesting challenge for developers in the sense that audio could
be searched by having the user draw the corresponding sound wave, but very few users can
actually describe what a sound wave would look like. Another approach might be to have the
user hum a few notes of the music to the computer via a microphone and have the search tool
bring back the completed piece of music based on the notes that were hummed. Regardless of
the approach, these are very interesting challenges for developers in term of searching audio
based on the content of the sound.

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