Dataset Generator for Musical Devices - Effects

The DGMD (Dataset Generator for Musical Devices) is a collection of MAX patches and JavaScript files for the automatic generation of datasets from hardware and software musical devices. The musical device could be a device that generates sound, such as a sound synthesizer. Alternatively, it could be a device that processes sound, like an audio effect. This tool was developed primarily to generate datasets for modeling musical devices utilizing data-driven black box techniques such as deep learning. However, generated dataset can be used also for analyzing the response of musical devices, or for other creative purposes. For example, the generated datasets can be used as the corpus for concatenative real-time synthesis.

The DGMD supports different type of devices:

Software plugins in VST or AU format
Hardware devices with a digital MIDI interface
Hardware devices with an analog CV/Gate interface
Hardware devices without an interface to control the synthesis/processing parameters

The DGMD triggers the device with a stimulus (an audio signal for effects, one or more notes for synthesizers) and record its response for different settings of the control parameters. The generated dataset is composed by a CSV file with the parameter values, and a collection of wave files including the recording of the device’s response.

To generate the dataset, up to 10 device parameters can be changed according to one of the following modalities:

Step – user set minimum, maximum and step size for each parameter, and the dataset is generated for all possible parameter combinations.
Random – user set minimum, maximum and step size for each parameter, and the dataset is generated sampling a user-defined number of uniformly distributed parameter combinations.
Sweep – parameters continuously sweep (triangular wave) at user defined individual frequencies, and the dataset is generated for a user-defined overall duration (in this case, parameters are saved into wave files instead of a single CSV file)
Manual – parameter combinations are manually set by the user, one at at time, which also manually trigger each recording of the device response.

The DGMD, present a variety of utilities and functionalities to facilitate the dataset generation and the follow up use for modeling purposes, such as the automatic detection and compensation of the device’s latency (plugin latency, or the audio interface I/O latency).

There are two version of the DGMD: