15-Minute Reviews :: Sloud UB Composer v 2.0.1.1

Hello everybody and welcome to another 15-Minute Review! Today’s application is Sloud UB Composer version 2.0.1.1 by Sload Inc. – An application to take your voice or a recorded voice and convert it into a MIDI layout.

Software Description

As Giveaway of the Day states:

“UB Composer converts voice to MIDI and wav to MIDI in real time with the best resolution. It recognises the tune you sing into a microphone and transforms it into MIDI score.

The score can be edited in a built-in editor. Sloud UB Composer is a veritable musical instrument containing a great selection of musical timbres. For instance, when singing a tune into a microphone you can simultaneously hear it blown by the trumpet or the sax, performed by the electric guitar or even beaten by drums!

Sloud UB Composer “feels”, recognizes and then plays back all the nuances of voice motion, all the mistakes and false notes. User can also edit notes of recognized MIDI melody.”

Quick Pros

• Interface is easy to use and get going
• Can input from both microphone and wav file
• Records a WAV of the microphone while doing the MIDI support
• Built-in note editor for correcting incorrect notes

Quick Cons

• Playing a resulting WAV resulting in slight skips and pops
• Resulting attempts in conversion to MIDI didn’t work well
• No MP3 input support

Expansion

A very unique concept for an application; To take a voice recording and turn it into a MIDI file for composers or even ringtones for phones. The application’s interface is easy to use and get going; Simply choose the input style (Mic or File) and click start and you’re on your way. (Of course, if you choose file, you must pick a WAV file – Sorry no MP3s here.) You can pick the instrument you want the file translated into through the ‘Setting’ button. You can even change the instument and re-save again from the same file. For the Mic record feature, the application does save the original WAV so that you can come back into the application to try to tweak the settings further. The application also has a built-in note editor as well so that you can tweak incorrect notes (Can’t alter length or position unfortunately.)

First thing I noticed is when I attempted to play the resulting WAV from the microphone (My first attempt,) there was slight skips and pops. I saved the WAV out and found that they were there afterwards playing through an audio player as well. The resulting MIDI was poor quality – Other than some of the beat of it (which wasn’t great either,) the tone was off (Not an octave issue, a serious tone issue – Some notes too high, others way too low.) I thought that it may be caused by recording from the microphone, so I found two solo a capellas off the internet to see if that that would rectify the issue. Converted them into WAV and confirmed the WAVs were in good condition, and proceeded to let the application do its thing. Same result as the microphone recording – The MIDI record was poor at best (at points sounding nothing like the original at all,) and the resulting WAV file having popping and skips. Since the minimum requirements is a Pentium II with 128MB memory, I feel that it is likely not my hardware. I played around for almost a half and hour to see if I could result in a better file; Octave shift, ticks per note, tempo, merge short pitch deviations (which disabling it results in something even stranger-sounding) and so forth to no avail. I even tried a file with the music and vocal and definitely not intended for this either.

Final Verdict

I am assuming that with some (a lot?) of playing, you could create a working file with this application. While this may be a good starting point for someone trying to create a ringtone or similar, I definitely wouldn’t recommend it for a skilled composer. I would suggest simply finding a good MIDI online that someone else has done derivative of the original, or find a good music studio suite. For free, it may be fun to mess around with and see if maybe get a good resulting file. As for paying $49.95, I couldn’t recommend it at all. Concidering there hasn’t been an update to the application according to the file information on the file since November 2006, I would be concerned about the application’s age as well as its maintenance as well.

Posted by BladedThoth on Thursday, June 07, 2007