Music Workout – A failed experiment

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This is one of my failed experiments

The idea: A app that adjusts the beat of music to the movements. Could be use in jogging and other fiscal exercise.

Many people like to listen to music during there workout. Mouse of the time there is a correlation between the energy of the music and the intensity of the workout. Sometimes when I am running I find my self syncing my steps to the beat of the music. I made a prototype using a sound manipulation library I found. The app allows the user to load all the mp3 files in a specific folder on the device and play them with the same BPM. I found out that beat detection is hard to do, best flash links I were good only for techno/house music (music with a clear base beat):

http://www.julapy.com/blog/2007/12/30/beat-detection-in-flash/
http://blog.andrevenancio.com/2010/01/06/beat-detection/
http://xobert.com/beatdetector/

I used this software to detect and write the BPM in the ID3 meta data of the MP3 files then I load them on my HTC Desire HD.
http://www.pistonsoft.com/bpm-detector.html

Resons why I gave up on the idea:
- I tried running with it and its annoying
- AS3 consumes a lot of CPU to do sound transformation
- Song don’t sound natural if tempo change is bigger then 10%
- Song average BPM is 120, I run at about 170 steps per minute

- On iOS devices, file and browse dialogs are not supported. This method cannot be used.

I still think this could be a successful application if developed in native code (for maximum speed) and if their are some added features like GPS speed detection and correlation with music, route etc.

Soucers