{"id":261392,"date":"2017-08-05T08:34:15","date_gmt":"2017-08-05T12:34:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/?p=261392"},"modified":"2024-10-29T14:21:42","modified_gmt":"2024-10-29T18:21:42","slug":"reu-music-minds-media-miles-davis-261392","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/reu-music-minds-media-miles-davis-261392\/","title":{"rendered":"What we learn when a machine \u2018listens\u2019 to Miles Davis"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"retro<\/a>
Summer of Research: <\/a><\/strong>Our latest Newscenter series showcases a cross-section of summer research conducted by undergraduates at Rochester and beyond.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Jake Altabef and Graham Palmer have been spending a lot of time at the University of Rochester this summer studying a recording that was first released nearly four decades before they were born.<\/p>\n

They\u2019ve been studying \u201cSo What,\u201d the first track on Miles Davis\u2019s Kind of Blue<\/em>, which many critics consider the greatest jazz album of all time. First released on vinyl in 1959, it has subsequently been re-mastered in multiple formats, including on cassette in 1987 and on compact disc that same year and in 1997, 2009, and 2013.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s what Altabef, a rising junior in computer systems engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and Graham, a rising senior in computer science at the University of Michigan, have been focusing on.<\/p>\n

How has the sound quality of \u201cSo What\u201d changed over the course of all those re-masters? Is the song \u201cbrighter\u201d in some formats than others? Is there less background \u201cnoise\u201d on disc than on vinyl?<\/p>\n

To compare the re-mastered versions of the track, they\u2019ve been using various tools, such as MATLAB software to analyze the noise-to-signal ratios and the Bark psychoacoustic scale to compare the relative loudness.<\/p>\n