Easily Accessible Production

Sounds from MEDD

By Mateo Eusebio, Ethan Fonarev, Daniel Bazikian, and Diego Gutierrez
Table of Contents
Defining the Problem

Searching for Solutions

Evaluating Solutions

Testing

Conclusion
Defining the Problem:

- Digital music production is a difficult and costly art form.

- By extension, it is very inaccessible to most people.

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Current Solutions:

-Free programs like Garageband offer a medium on which to produce music

-Websites like epidemicsound.com and splice.com offer purchasable, digital sound packs

- Mp3 converter softwares to sample and clip audio files

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Why These Solutions are Unreliable

-Free programs like Garageband offer a basic set of sounds that, when used by everyone,
make it hard for musicians to create their own, unique sound

-Current prices for sound packs are too expensive

-Mp3 conversion brings up the risk of viruses and lower quality sound

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Research Conducted

-We created a survey and sent it out to a sample group of 100+ participants

-We received 100+ responses and compiled that data

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Research Results - Music Appreciation
-94.2% of people say music improves their quality of life

-52.4% of people can listen to entire albums in one sitting

-68.9% of people are interested in a product that will make music production easier and
more accessible to them

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Research Results - Music Production
-64% of people rarely produce music

-67% of people have some experience producing music

-32% of people are uncomfortable with music production

-38% of people are somewhat comfortable with music production

-54% of people are uncomfortable with using physical equipment to produce music

-28.2% are somewhat comfortable with using physical equipment to produce music

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Research Results - Availability to Equipment
-95% of participants have a computer at home

-70% of participants have at least one musical instrument at home

-34% of participants have a microphone at home

-1% have a turntable

-1% have a MIDI keyboard

-1% have an AMP

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Research Analysis
Music Appreciation:
● A majority of people genuinely enjoy and appreciate music and would like to have a product that allows them
to make music themselves. This shows us that there is a market interest.

Music Production:
● A decent majority of people have some experience in music production, but are still relatively uncomfortable
with it. This shows that our solution will be useful to people.

Availability to Equipment:
● Most people have access to a computer. Due to a minority of people owning microphones, a majority of
people don’t have access to producing sounds and exporting them into a digital format. This widespread
inaccessibility adds value to our potential product.
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Research Analysis cont.
Summary:

A majority of people are genuinely appreciate music and are interested in production. However,
most people are either inexperienced or don’t have access to the proper recording hardware to
create sound for music production. The market need for our product is affirmed by this
inaccessibility to the reliable production of digital sound. Add to that the expensive and risky
alternatives highlighted prior, which creates this market need for a means of producing music
cheaply and reliably.

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Requirements Specified
What we were looking for:

● In order to directly solve the problem, we need to create a product that is, first and foremost,
accessible to an inexperienced audience.

● In order to actually sell the product, we also need to understand the market appeal for it by
comparing its viability to other market competitors.
Requirements Specified cont.
Accessibility - 33%

Affordability - 13%

Uniqueness - 16.3%

Utility - 5.4%

Market - 8.3%

Market Appeal - 17%

Simplicity - 7%
*The importance of these aspects have been weighted as shown by the percentage points.* 13
Defining Possible Solutions
● Music Maker App (DAW)

● Digital Sound Packs

● Physical Sound Kits

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Evaluating Possible Solutions

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Choosing Possible Solutions
- As shown in the requirements slide, each individual in the group gave each aspect of
our product a value to decide which part of our product was most important to each
of us.
- This allows us to make a choice on which concept we should go with based on what
we value in a product and what we think will make it sell in the marketplace.
- Overall, accessibility received the highest percentage of values, which means that we
all believe accessibility to be the most important aspect of our product, and that
accessibility should be the main selling point of our product.

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Choosing Possible Solutions cont.
- All three concepts on the decision matrix had weighted values based on how much
each aspect correlated with the idea. For example, uniqueness has a larger weight on
the Digital Sound Kit than on the Music Maker idea because a Music Making
program isn't as unique of an idea, as there are many DAW programs out there.

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Our Solution
- With all of that in mind, the Digital Sound Kit solution/idea best fits our goals for our
design. We value accessibility the most, and since it can be accessed and downloaded
from a website it is pretty accessible.
- From another angle, it fills the niche of being an accessible entry to music production
for anyone who is interested in it, as they can download our sounds and use them on
any DAW they prefer.
Prototyping
- With our solution in mind, we began to think of tests we could run to create a
prototype website. These tests are described in detail in our Test Plan Set Up
document.
- Experiment 1: Account Coding
- Testing to see whether or not we could code our website to have user accounts and logins so they can
have a more personalized experience on it.
- Experiment 2: Transactional Coding
- A test run to investigate if we could code VISA and PayPal as payment methods into our website in
order to yield profit and distribute the sounds safely and efficiently.
- Experiment 3: Download Tests
- The final test, which consisted of downloading our sounds into different formats in order to make sure
it functioned properly.

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Lab Test Setup
Goal: to devise a set of experiments with which to test the functionality of our product

Things to test:

- Website functionality
- Sound quality
- Sound file integrity

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Empirical Procedures
Why this is important: Scientific method relies on empiricism.

Labs:

- Transactional Systems (Website functionality)

- Sound Tests (Sound quality)

- Download Tests (Sound integrity)

Transactional Functionality
Transactional Functionality
Hypothesis: If we use the redux program from Python, our transactions will work.

Procedure:

- Create mock store items

- Set up VISA/Paypal accounts
- Perform primary actions on mock items (Add to cart, remove from cart)
- Perform checkout feature
- Perform transaction
Transactional Functionality - Code
class Item:
def __init__(self, name, price):
self.name = name
self.price = price
def getPrice(self):
return self.price
def getName(self):
return self.name
class Cart:
def __init__(self, list):
self.list = []
def addItem(self, item):
self.list.append(self.list)
def getTotal(self): c.addItem(item3)
total = 0 print "You have %i items in your cart
for item in self.list: for a total of $%.02f" %(c.getNumItems(),
name, price = item # or price = item[1] c.getTotal())
total = total + price c.removeItem(item3)
print "You have %i items in your cart
def getNumItems(self): for a total of $%.02f" % (c.getNumItems(),
count = 0 for c in range(self.list): count = self.list + c.getTotal()) main()
1 return count
-Courtesy of Pymbook.com
def removeItem(self, item) #removes the item
from the cart's item list
def main():
item1 = Item("Sound1", .69)
item2 = Item("Sound2", 2.39)
item3 = Item("Sound3", .99)
c = Cart() c.addItem(item1)
c.addItem(item2)
Transactional Functionality - Results
Website functionality results:

Transactional functionality results:

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Sound Quality
Sound Quality
Hypothesis: When audio undergoes gain and volume increase, sound quality will
diminish.

Procedure:

- Create tracks which will house the audio for testing

- Run pre-test analysis of the workstation
- Begin by increasing gain to about “5” on the amplifiers of each track
- Play the length of all audio in tracks and analyze peak levels (document any
overloading headspace)
- Bring gain to “10” and repeat step 4
- Open the master EQ and play the length of the audio in the tracks. Note peaking and
placement of sound waves to determine tonal purity.
Test Results
● Upon completion of Step 3 peak level went to -3.7
○ No notable overloading - volume neutrality undisturbed
● After completing Step 5 there was a noticeable difference when gain was put to max. Peak level reached 1.3,
surpassing the level 5 gain test. After analysis in the Master EQ, large peaks were seen from 75 - 100Hz.

● *dBFS = a unit of measurement for amplitude levels in digital systems

● *Gain = how loud the INPUT of the channel or amp is. It controls tone, not loudness.

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Download Tests(Audio File Formats)
Hypothesis:
All audio files will retain the same file size (bytes) after file conversion.
We will calculate and document the file size because we want all files across every system to be a similar size to one another while
retaining the quality. The same kind of file size and quality reflects a proper conversion.
Independent Variable: The file’s format.
Dependent Variable: The size of the file.
Control: The starting file that we will convert.

Procedure:
1. Record a set of basic audio clips
2. Upload the Django redux program to the website (function explained in experiment 1)
3. Upload the audio clips to the website
4. From a Mac Computer, download the audio file and see if the file is compatible with the system
5. Repeat steps 1-4 with the Chromebook and Windows computers
6. For the incompatible computers, convert the downloaded files to a compatible format and upload them to the website.
7. Clear all systems of those files and download them again
8. Integrate each file into each OS’s respective music production program and document the quality of the sound.
9. Document the file sizes of each sound.
Results
Conclusion:
MP3s are smaller than WAV and AIF files because they are compressed using lossy compression. Lossy compression means that some information
is lost when the files are made smaller. High-quality MP3s are less compressed; therefore, they discard less data, but they are usually larger in size
than lower-quality MP3s. We converted our youtube audio clip to a lossless MP3(meaning it didn’t decrease in quality), and then converted the
MP3’s to the WAV and AIFF which among MP3 are the most popular file formats for audio in the music production industry. Our website will
allow access for one to convert the audio to the format of their choice but we will indicate the one that takes the least data while still being lossless.
Our MP3 conversion will be of higher quality than most but if audio quality is the biggest priority users can go with other forms of file formats
which take up more bytes.

Byte Size MP3 WAV AIFF

Sound Clip 1 715 KB 5.11 MB 5.11 MB

(30sec)

Sound Clip 2 (7 sec) 164 KB 1.14 MB 588.05 KB

The Advantages Our Product Provides
● Easier access to music production tools
○ Unlike other VST/Sound Pack providers, we charge a very small amount for quality production
resources
○ Our easy to navigate website makes file downloading/use easier than ever
● Product Diversity
○ Unlike many other providers, MEDD aims to satisfy all genres and project concepts through our
diverse library of instruments and FX
● Purchase Prices
○ We do not charge monthly for our services, making our customers’ music production process
much more affordable. All purchases are one time and aren’t restricted to a certain payment plan.

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