Partiels – Exploring, Analyzing and Understanding Sounds
This
article
presents
Partiels,
an
open-source
application
developed at IRCAM to analyze digital audio files and explore
sound characteristics.
The application uses Vamp plug-ins to
extract various information on different aspects of the sound, such
as spectrum, partials, pitch, tempo, text, and chords. Partiels is the
successor to AudioSculpt, offering a modern, flexible interface for
visualizing, editing, and exporting analysis results, addressing a
wide range of issues from musicological practice to sound creation
and signal processing research. The article describes Partiels’ key
features, including analysis organization, audio file management,
results visualization and editing, as well as data export and sharing
options, and its interoperability with other software such as Max
and Pure Data. In addition, it highlights the numerous analysis
plug-ins developed at IRCAM, based in particular on machine
learning models, as well as the IRCAM Vamp extension, which
overcomes certain limitations of the original Vamp format.