A Fast Data Structure for Disk-Based Audio Editing

Computer music research calls for a good tool to display and edit music and audio information. Finding no suitable tools available that are flexible enough to support various research tasks, we created an open source tool called Audacity that we can customize to support annotation, analysis, and processing. The editor displays large audio files as well as discrete data including MIDI. Our implementation introduces a new data structure for audio that combines the speed of non-destructive editing with the direct manipulation convenience of in-place editors. This paper describes the data structure, its performance, features, and its use in an audio editor.