Wav Files Analysis - Key And Tempo

ItsMeTho wrote on 5/7/2025, 6:24 PM

Hi, can SoundForge Pro 18 batch analyze key and tempo of .wav files?
I don't want to have to shell out the cost for Mixed In Key 11. Been trying analysis with Traktor Pro 4 and it's really struggling with wav files. The ID3V2 tags are inconsistent. Sometimes the BPM and KEY is showing up in my file manager and sometimes it isn't. And the results are all over the place. Even with the literal bpm and key in the file name, it's still producing wrong key results, or half time tempo. (Really? Are we still living in 1993 or...)

Would be nice if I could just get a batch analysis of my loops. Even if the tags are sidecar, as long as FL Studio can read the embedded tags and I don't have to tell it to detect tempo every single time. Analyze once and the data is saved with your samples forever.

...

Would be nice to batch acidize my drum loops too, but it's looking like that will be a manual process anyway. I've tried several region adding plugins and each one puts way too many markers and in the wrong places.

Would be nice to have two types of regions too. Cue Point and Transient. Both types would be the same format, but different purpose (Like paragraphs and chapters for a book). You would push your number keys to jump to transients and Ctrl + numbers for cue points. They would accept major MIDI notes for transients and their corresponding Minor MIDI notes for Cue points.

You only have ten numbers to use anyway, so this would work well by frog jumping the assigned numbers to the jurisdiction of the current cue point.

Example: Push the Ctrl + 3 to jump to your 3rd Cue point in your track. Now it's looping that major region (cue). The numbers are now reset to be context aware to that selected region. 1 would jump to start of Cue Point 3, 2 is the next transient etc. MIDI notes with a connected MIDI controller would be the same. Black keys on the MIDI controller would be cue points and white keys transients.

Comments

SP. wrote on 5/7/2025, 7:53 PM

@ItsMeTho No, Sound Forge can't do this.

Generally, for key and tempo detection I personally have use tools like Melodyne, RipX or Sononym. But these aren't perfect either. To my knowledge these programs don't offer a way to fill tags with the detected information.

ItsMeTho wrote on 5/8/2025, 7:51 AM

@ItsMeTho No, Sound Forge can't do this.

Generally, for key and tempo detection I personally have use tools like Melodyne, RipX or Sononym. But these aren't perfect either. To my knowledge these programs don't offer a way to fill tags with the detected information.

Ok. Well that's a bummer. When I think of the word "Sound Forge" I dream of a blacksmith with all his tools, able to do anything with audio.

I'm cookin up those beats! 😀

I have Sononym too. It does use its own database instead of writing metadata, so you're right about that.
A while ago I actually converted my samples to flac, so that I can have metadata on them. Before learning what I had done wrong. So they went back to wav.

I'll ask around, and keep looking. Mixed In Key standard is like $100. That's hard to take, unless someone is a dj that uses the features. I need the classic key names too, not that camelot style. What am I supposed to do with 3B or 7M?

It does say it writes metadata, and it also says it writes cue points. That sounds like "regions" but I get the feeling it's proprietary. Says it integrates with Traktor Pro 4, so that's not a good sign, when wanting permanent generic metadata written directly to the files; readable by other audio software.

I'm not having the same conversation with my DAW about sample tempo and keys anymore. Nope. I'm not sitting there wasting my life away pushing buttons about detecting one sample at a time ever again. Not in the age of deepfakes and backflipping robots. If I can't do extremely basic windows 95 era tasks like batch process key and tempo on a sample library in 2025, something is seriously wrong about this industry.