The Sonic Annotator can be used to conveniently evaluate several (hundreds!) of audio files with Vamp plugins in one swoop. The program runs without installation. The operation is done via a command window (power shell), where commands have to be typed.

1. download Sonic-Annotator (https://code.soundsoftware.ac.uk/projects/sonic-annotator/files) and unpack it, e.g. to C:\Programme\sonic-annotator-1.6-win32

2. open Power-Shell (Windows: right-click in start menu to see Power Shell in program menu) or terminal window (Mac) and change to the corresponding directory (with the cd command; change directory):

 cd C:\Programs\sonic-annotator-1.6-win32
 (Just type the command after the '... >' )

All vamp plugins available on your computer in the Vamp Plugin folder are displayed with the following command:

 .\sonic-annotator --list
 (.\ is necessary if access rights to sonic-annotator are denied).

A description of each vamp plugin is displayed by the following command, e.g., the Queen Mary tempo tracker:

 .\sonic-annotator -s vamp:qm-vamp-plugins:qm-tempotracker:tempo 

The default settings of the respective vamp plugin are listed, too. Unfortunately, changes to these default settings can only be made when using the RDF/Turtle format. Information on this can be found here.

Two notes on dealing with power shell / command windows:

• The cursor key cursor up repeats the last command(s)!
• Use the possibilities of cut & paste to copy commands or parts of them (from this wiki, path names etc.).

3. the following command works to query the tempotracker plugin for an audio file 'Audio01.mp3':

 .\sonic-annotator -d vamp:qm-vamp-plugins:qm-tempotracker:tempo Audio01.mp3 -w csv

The results are automatically written to a .csv file ('-w csv') named after the audio file and the vamp plugin.
The - -csv-separator „;“ option separates the results with a semicolon so that they are displayed in cells in spreadsheet software (like Excel).

 .\sonic-annotator -d vamp:qm-vamp-plugins:qm-tempotracker:tempo Audio01.mp3 -w csv --csv-separator ";"

4. multiple (recursive) queries: put all audio files you want to evaluate into one folder, e.g. c:/sound. Then enter the following command:

 .\sonic-annotator -d vamp:qm-vamp-plugins:qm-tempotracker:tempo -r c:/sound -w csv
 (Important is the '-r' after the vamp plugin name, for 'recursive').

To write all results to a single file with the filename 'results.csv', use the following command suffix: - -csv-one-file „results.csv“ suffix.

Here is an example of an overall command to determine the tempo of a set of audio files located in the c:/sound folder.

 .\sonic-annotator -d vamp:qm-vamp-plugins:qm-tempotracker:tempo -r c:/sound -w csv --csv-one-file "results.csv" --csv-separator ";" 

Load the tracks of a CD or a playlist into a folder and compare

• the (local) tempo of each track
• the harmony of each piece
• the tuning (deviation from 440 Hz) of the pieces