Interactive Music Applications by MPEG-A Support in Sonic Visualizer

New interactive music services have emerged, despite currently using proprietary file formats. Having a standardized file format could benefit the interoperability between these services. In this regard, the ISO/IEC Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) issued a new standard, the so called, MPEG-A: Interactive Music Application Format (IM AF). The purpose of this paper is to describe the design and implementation of an IM AF codec and its integration into Sonic Visualiser. In this way, the visualization of the chords or the pitch of the main melody aligned in time with the song's lyrics is achieved. Furthermore, this integration provides the semantic audio research community with a test-bed for further development and comparison of new Sonic Visualiser VAMP plug-ins, e.g., for the conversion of singing voice to text and/or automatic highlighting of lyrics for karaoke applications.