Representsounds

Representsounds is a conceptual framework for encoding auditory information in digital systems, enabling a structured representation of sounds that can be stored, searched, synthesized, and analyzed.

The framework emphasizes combining temporal data (onset, duration), spectral data (harmonics, spectral envelope), and contextual data (source, environment, license). Representations can be event-based (sound events with attributes) or feature-based (descriptors like MFCCs, chroma, etc.).

Implementations may use JSON-like schemas or dedicated binary formats; common choices include JSON, XML, or compact binary encodings to support efficient indexing.

Libraries and systems for digital music archiving, search and retrieval, game audio pipelines, and assistive technologies could adopt representsounds to standardize sound metadata and enable interoperability.

It intersects with Music Information Retrieval (MIR), music notation standards (e.g., MIDI, MusicXML), and sound ontologies; not a single widely adopted standard, but a design goal in various research and industry efforts.

As of now, representsounds remains an informal concept rather than a single standard, with various researchers exploring its definitions and applications.

Challenges include capturing perceptual similarity, handling polyphonic and complex sounds, size of representations, and standardization across domains.