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eddie1261
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eddie1261
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No, not Captain Marvel's Shazam. The app.
So here the situation. As I sit here doing stuff on the computer I have a concert of The Cure playing. Robert Smith writes these songs that have titles that pretty much have no reference to the chorus where you can usually get a clue of the title. So as this concert plays I keep hitting up Shazam for the titles. It has yet to find ONE song from the concert audio. Even the popular stuff like Friday I'm In Love and Just Like Heaven! The song that just played was a great example. I know this song. It's titled One Hundred Years. I gave Shazam 3 tries and it did not find it. I paused the video, went to "the tube" and found the song. Shazam found it in 3 seconds.
So, what is it about the recognition algorhythm that Shazam seems to ONLY recognize studio recordings? Is there perhaps some embedded MP3 encoding involved? I have read 6 articles so far and they all agree that Shazam works by taking an audio sample and matching it up with a database.
Does anybody have any propeller-head level knowledge about how this actually works? It seems like if it samples, it shouldn't matter what the source is of the sample that says "Show me show me show me how you do that trick, the one that makes me scream, she said" as long as it hears those words. And it should spit out "Just Like Heaven."
THIS is the kind of thing I lay awake at night thinking about!
Yeah yeah... I know...
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Nothing tech, just an observation. My phone’s Shazam only works when I turn up the volume considerably on my playback device.
BIAB 2025 Win Audiophile. Software: Studio One 7 Pro, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus 192 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Slate VSX, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
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eddie1261
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eddie1261
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Just an FYI type reply here. The volume was the same when I tested with youtube as the concert. Very strange and this is going to bother me until I figure it out.
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The only thing I can tell you is what you already know. It picks up original recordings and not live ones. I do use it a lot on newer music that I'm not familiar with.
 Steve BIAB/RB 2022, Pro Tools 2020, Korg N5, JBL LSR 4328 Powered Monitors, AKG/Shure Mics.
PC: Win11 PRO, 4 TB M2 SSD, 2 TB HD, 128 GB Memory
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eddie1261
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eddie1261
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Aha, Steve, but how does it KNOW it's a studio recording or a live performance? Same lyrics, same music... Again I wonder if there is some subliminal MP3 tag on a CD that contains a database reference number or not. And I have no idea who to ask this question of to get an official answer. Have you ever seen a way to talk to an entity or an app like Shazam? 
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You must have weak google-fu. The link has more details. Shazam uses a special type of graph called spectogram. Spectogram is a visual representation of frequencies as they vary in time. In other words, it’s a three dimensional graph. Reference: How does Shazam work?
Steve BIAB/RB 2022, Pro Tools 2020, Korg N5, JBL LSR 4328 Powered Monitors, AKG/Shure Mics.
PC: Win11 PRO, 4 TB M2 SSD, 2 TB HD, 128 GB Memory
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eddie1261
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eddie1261
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I read every word of that same article last night. It does not explain why the same song from different sources is not recognized. Unless buried in their charts and graphs that topic is addressed, I did not see it there. It explains how Shazam recognizes songs, but not why it doesn't recognize every instance of the same song. If it comes down to analog vs digital, then it DOES come down to encoding, as MP3
Riddle me this.
Does live music NOT have the same frequencies as studio recorded music? How does the spectrogram know it is live and not studio? A4 is 440hz no matter what the source is. A3 is 330. A2 is 200, etc.
I need to talk to the Wizard of Shazam!!
I have tested with studio recordings saved as WAV, FLAC, MP3 and M4A. Shazam found all 4 of those. I also grabbed a karaoke version from the web and Shazam found that. That wasn't even done by the actual band! I tested with an MP3 from the CD and the same song ripped from a live concert. Found them. Now I have to dig into a couple of things I hadn't thought of, like how is the audio encoded in the video of that concert. And they do this song at every concert and I have about 6 Cure concerts on m media computer. Off I go! This is truly making me crazy!! Well...
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What I got from that article was that there's some kind of audio database that Shazam checks when you start it and when it recognizes the portion of the song you are playing, it identifies it. So there's no mystery in my eyes. All these songs are stored somewhere and Shazam does a database query on what you are playing.
Steve BIAB/RB 2022, Pro Tools 2020, Korg N5, JBL LSR 4328 Powered Monitors, AKG/Shure Mics.
PC: Win11 PRO, 4 TB M2 SSD, 2 TB HD, 128 GB Memory
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[quote=eddie1261.....................
Riddle me this.
Does live music NOT have the same frequencies as studio recorded music? How does the spectrogram know it is live and not studio? A4 is 440hz no matter what the source is. A3 is 330. A2 is 200, etc.
I need to talk to the Wizard of Shazam!!
..................... [/quote]
Isn't A3 220hz and A2 110hz? In every octave the frequency is doubled going up and halved going down does it not?
I think my wife has started to show the first signs of dementia.
She said she can't remember what she ever saw in me!
64 bit Win 10 Pro, the latest BiaB/RB, Roland Octa-Capture audio interface, a ton of software/hardware
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eddie1261
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eddie1261
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You are right Mario. I was typing too fast while doing 3 other things and messed that up.
But I know when Christine McVie died... LOL!!!
This is so strange to me that Shazam treats audio from a video different from studio audio. The audio in MP4 movies is AAC encoded. Shazam doesn't detect it. To play the same song from a CD in MP3, it does.
I need a nap.
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...............
But I know when Christine McVie died... LOL!!!
....................
I need a nap. I'll never live that down will I? LOL!!! Naps are good!
I think my wife has started to show the first signs of dementia.
She said she can't remember what she ever saw in me!
64 bit Win 10 Pro, the latest BiaB/RB, Roland Octa-Capture audio interface, a ton of software/hardware
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This is so strange to me that Shazam treats audio from a video different from studio audio. The audio in MP4 movies is AAC encoded. Shazam doesn't detect it. To play the same song from a CD in MP3, it does. That's strange. I have not experienced this. If I Shazam during a movie when I want to know the song, it usually picks it up as easily as it does during a song on the radio or a CD as long as it's original audio. Don't lose sleep over this sir. 
Steve BIAB/RB 2022, Pro Tools 2020, Korg N5, JBL LSR 4328 Powered Monitors, AKG/Shure Mics.
PC: Win11 PRO, 4 TB M2 SSD, 2 TB HD, 128 GB Memory
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eddie1261
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Don't lose sleep over this sir. Not my nature, amigo. One something piques my interest I track it down like a drug dog finds cocaine at the Columbian Airport.
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As far as I know, Schazam directly reads the ISRC codes that are embedded as meta data in most commercial recordings to allow artists to collect royalties from streamed and broadcasted performances of their work. Although it wouldn't be impossible to put such information in a live recording, the ISRC codes are usually put in by the mastering engineer of a studio recording. Actually, adding it LIVE, I think would be impossible. They could only be added to a RECORDING of a live performance.
More often than not, the actual recording is played in a movie, so the meta data is included in the playback for Schazam to process. However, a live performance of a song in a video is much less likely to have had the ISRC codes added by someone after the video was recorded.
Keith
2026 Audiophile Windows 11 RYZEN THREADRIPPER 3960X 4.5GHZ 128 GB RAM 2 Nvidia RTX 3090s, Vegas,Acid,SoundForge,Izotope Production,Melodyne Studio,SONAR,3 Raven Mtis
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eddie1261
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That's kind of what I thought, Keith. It had to be something along those lines. Further research about ISRC codes show you are correct. And the logic of the same song not being recognized from a live performance supports that. Thanks.
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