Beat detection and FFT
- by Quincy
So I am working on a platformer game which includes music with beat detection. I am currently using a simple if the energy that is stored in the history buffer is smaller then the current energy there is a beat. The problem with this is that ofcourse if you use songs like rock songs where you have a pretty steady amplitude this isn't going to work.
So I looked further and found algorithms splitting the sound into multiple bands using FFT. I then found this : http://en.literateprograms.org/Cooley-Tukey_FFT_algorithm_(C)
The only problem I'm having is that I am quite new to audio and I have no idea how to use that to split the signal up into multiple signals.
So my question is :
How do you use a FFT to split a signal into multiple bands ?
Also for the guys interested, this is my algorithm in c# :
// C = threshold, N = size of history buffer / 1024
public void PlaceBeatMarkers(float C, int N)
{
List<float> instantEnergyList = new List<float>();
short[] samples = soundData.Samples;
float timePerSample = 1 / (float)soundData.SampleRate;
int sampleIndex = 0;
int nextSamples = 1024;
// Calculate instant energy for every 1024 samples.
while (sampleIndex + nextSamples < samples.Length)
{
float instantEnergy = 0;
for (int i = 0; i < nextSamples; i++)
{
instantEnergy += Math.Abs((float)samples[sampleIndex + i]);
}
instantEnergy /= nextSamples;
instantEnergyList.Add(instantEnergy);
if(sampleIndex + nextSamples >= samples.Length)
nextSamples = samples.Length - sampleIndex - 1;
sampleIndex += nextSamples;
}
int index = N;
int numInBuffer = index;
float historyBuffer = 0;
//Fill the history buffer with n * instant energy
for (int i = 0; i < index; i++)
{
historyBuffer += instantEnergyList[i];
}
// If instantEnergy / samples in buffer < instantEnergy for the next sample then add beatmarker.
while (index + 1 < instantEnergyList.Count)
{
if(instantEnergyList[index + 1] > (historyBuffer / numInBuffer) * C)
beatMarkers.Add((index + 1) * 1024 * timePerSample);
historyBuffer -= instantEnergyList[index - numInBuffer];
historyBuffer += instantEnergyList[index + 1];
index++;
}
}
