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Essentia {{version}} User and Developer Manual

What is Essentia?

Essentia is an open-source C++ library for audio analysis and audio-based music information retrieval released under the Affero GPLv3 license (also available under proprietary license upon request). It provides a reusable collection of algorithms mainly used to extract features from audio files. The library provide Python bindings, which means that you can control Essentia and write scripts that use Essentia’s features from within Python (just as you would in Matlab). There is also a streaming mode in which you can connect algorithms and run them automatically instead of specifying explicitly the order of execution (such as PureData or Max/MSP). The advantage of the streaming mode is that it requires less boilerplate code and uses less memory.

Essentia is not a framework, but rather a collection of algorithms wrapped in a library. It doesn’t provide common high-level logic for descriptor computation (therefore, you are not locked into a certain way of doing things). It rather focuses on the robustness, performance and optimality of the provided algorithms, as well as ease of use. The flow of the analysis is decided and implemented by the user, while Essentia is taking care of the implementation details of the algorithms being used. A number of predefined executable extractors for the available music descriptors are provided with the library as examples, however they should not be considered as the only correct way of doing things.

Essentia currently features the following algorithms (among others):

Crediting Essentia

Please credit properly your use of Essentia! If you use the Essentia library in your software please acknowledge it and specify its origen as http://essentia.upf.edu. If you do some research and publish an article, cite both the Essentia paper [1] and the specific references mentioned in the documentation of the algorithms used. We would be also very grateful if you let us know how you use Essentia by sending an email to mtg@upf.edu

[1] Bogdanov, D., Wack N., Gómez E., Gulati S., Herrera P., Mayor O., et al. (2013). ESSENTIA: an Audio Analysis Library for Music Information Retrieval. International Society for Music Information Retrieval Conference (ISMIR'13). 493-498.

User Documentation

Introduction
An introduction to Essentia's main concepts

Building and installing Essentia
Instructions to get Essentia running on your computer

Algorithms overview
A quick description of the main algorithms

Python tutorial for beginners
A hands-on introduction to Essentia

Using extractors out-of-box
Getting some quick results with no programming required

Design Overview
An explanation of Essentia's basic types and classes

"Standard" mode how-to
Learn how to write a "standard" extractor

Streaming mode architecture
A description of how the "streaming" mode works

"Streaming" mode how-to
Learn how to write a "streaming" extractor

Algorithm reference
The detailed documentation for all the algorithms

Developer Documentation

Extending Essentia
How to write new "standard" algorithms for Essentia

Extending Essentia "streaming"
How to write new "streaming" algorithms for Essentia

Composite API
The inner workings of the composite algorithms

Execution network algorithm
How Essentia's streaming scheduler works

Doxygen C++ documentation
The documentation for the base classes used in Essentia

Coding guidelines
Good practices to follow when developing new algorithms

Contents
For a complete overview of the documentation


 

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