AutoBPM

BPM, or ‘Beats Per Minute’ is a key piece of information when it comes to dealing with audio files.

It mostly helps you get an idea of the speed of a song before you play it. Knowing the BPM value comes in handy when you need to put together an audio soundtrack and want to keep the rhythm steady throughout play time. DJs are probably the ones that make the best of this measurement, as they can use the information to create smooth transitions between tracks.

A lot of the times, the BPM value isn’t something you have in plain sight and you need to obtain it using a third party application if your player doesn’t support BPM extraction.

AutoBPM is a tool that can help you easily find out the BPM value of a WAV track in a simple manner. It does so by splitting the audio signal that comes through the WaveIn device of your computer. The input is separated into three frequency bands and are displayed in red, green and blue colors. The application then analyzes the patterns in which the colors appear and when a repetition is identified it maps out the BPM graph and displays its value.

It’s a really interesting way to obtain the BPM but somehow it doesn’t feel all that practical. Besides the fact that you have to have to help out the application by selecting an orientative value, its measurements are for the WAV audio format which is rarely used these days.

AutoBPM is rather a tool you would use to explain how an application figures out the BPM in general. Even as a DJ, you won’t rely on this method except maybe when your DJing application doesn’t support BPM detection. A thing that is unlikely today.

AutoBPM is a nice little tool that still has a purpose and still functions well but it’s a bit outdated.