Announcing ReVAMP: Bringing Vamp Audio Analysis Plugins to R

Announcing ReVAMP: Bringing Vamp Audio Analysis Plugins to R

I am pleased to announce the initial release of ReVAMP, a new R package that provides access to the Vamp plugin system from within R.

ReVAMP enables researchers to apply a wide range of established audio analysis algorithms—commonly used in music information retrieval (MIR), digital signal processing, and acoustic research—directly to audio data in R, with results returned in analysis-ready data structures.

Background

The Vamp plugin system is a well-established standard for audio feature extraction, originally developed by the Centre for Digital Music at Queen Mary University of London. Vamp plugins are widely used in research software and toolkits for tasks such as:

• Spectral and cepstral analysis
• Onset and beat detection
• Tempo and pitch estimation
• Loudness and amplitude tracking

ReVAMP lowers the entry barrier for R users by providing a native interface that integrates naturally with existing R workflows.

Key Features

• Direct access to installed Vamp plugins
  Any Vamp plugin available on the host system can be invoked from R.

• Integration with existing R audio tools
  ReVAMP works seamlessly with common R audio packages (e.g. tuneR) for reading and handling audio files.

Installation

ReVAMP is available from CRAN:

install.packages("ReVAMP")

Running a pkugin is straightforward. Here is a simple example:

library(ReVAMP)
library(tuneR)

# Load an audio file
wave <- readWave("example.wav")

# Run a Vamp plugin
features <- runPlugin(
  wave = wave,
  key = "vamp-example-plugins:amplitudefollower",
  useFrames = FALSE
)

head(features)

Vamp Plugins must be installed on your system for ReVAMP to access them. You can find a list of available plugins and installation instructions at the Vamp plugin repository. The ReVAMP documentation provides guidance on Managining Vamp Plugin Paths.