Proposal Source Separation

Project Proposal

 * Source Separation is the opposite of mixing. Given a track with multiple sources on it, how do you get to the separate sources?  There's no general algorithm to do it, but some cases are not impossibly hard, such as separating a flute from background (audience) noises.
 * Source Separation and audio classification are closely related and the proposal is to tackle the interface for both at the same time. A classifier can be seen as a source separator where of the tracks separated all but one are silent at each sample.

Developer Backing

 * James Crook - Especially GUI for this.

Use Cases

 * Silence finders: For use in truncate silence effect.
 * Radio phone-in interview: Separate and label the two speakers based on the frequencies. Telephone has much reduced bandwidth providing a simple criterion on which to separate.

Any one of these would be a significant advance for Audacity.

Is Source Separation Hard?
Yes :-) Some of the difficulties are....

On the plus side....

Interface

 * The commercial program... (possibly compare to software for blue screening)