Audacity Forum

stevethefiddle wrote:

tommyd wrote:...but sometimes "fairly accurately" isn't good enough, and if I were cataloging a large number of loops (for instance) it'd be quite time consuming; an automatic tempo detector would be quick and precise.

The manual calculation method described previously is by far the most accurate method. Automatic BPM detectors do exist, but they only work on certain kinds of material as they depend on having a strong, clear and definite beat - a gentle flute or synth pad sample for example would fail completely

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stevethefiddle wrote:If the samples are "ready to go" loops (all the editing and trimming has been done). then provided that the loop points are at the start and end of the loop, then you can simply calculate the BPM from the length of the sample

Quite (see below...)

stevethefiddle wrote:From a casual listen you will know if it's an 8 beat sample or a 16 beat sample, and you will know if it's around 120 BPM or 240 BPM, so you do the calculation "(beats/length) x 60" and if you get an answer of 236 BPM, but you know that it should be about 120 BPM, then obviously the correct answer is 118 BPM.

Perhaps if the time bar had more options -
As I said before, I would like to see an option of setting "number of beats per par" and BPM, then having the time bar display "beats and bars". This would also be a very quick way that you could check if a loop is the BPM that you have it catalogued as, and a quick way to check if two samples have the same BPM.
If there was also the option to display in minutes (with several decimal places), then your calculation would become much easier - just "number of beats/length".

Hmmmm...I think perhaps I didn't make myself clear (sorry!). All I meant by an "automatic tempo detector" was a built-in calculator that does the maths [above] for you - I wasn't suggesting some kind of intelligent transient-sensing algorithm (which would obviously be much more complicated and, as you pointed out, of limited use with undynamic material). Perhaps I should have said "tempo calculator", instead.

There are other audio editors that can do this. I don't know if you're familiar with Recycle, but that calculates the tempo of your loop for you: you tell it the time signature and the number of bars and beats, and it tells you the tempo in bpm. Such a feature would, it seems to me, be fairly easy to implement. And it's hardly revolutionary but it would speed up my workflow.

+1 for more time bar options, too: that would be really useful.