8Dify

Inspiration

I listen to a lot of 8D edits of songs I like. People create this by adding reverb, changing different equalizer settings, and panning in the audio settings of the file. I always thought this was incredibly cool which is why I wanted to create an app that automates the process for you.

What it does

When you enter the app you have the option to upload a file into the app. You then click the process audio button. The app processes the file and adds different effects like reverb, panning, and mixing the audio to create an 8D effect. This means the audio will move around in between your headphones, have an expanded soundstage, and have a large effect. This is similar to the Dolby Atmos/Spatial Audio effect, just with more "personality" because the music essentially moves around you. This change is best experienced with headphones/earbuds, but if your phone has stereo sound you might be able to hear it without earbuds.

How we built it

I coded the entire app in SwiftUI and Xcode. For the frontend, I used UIKit to create the user interface. For the backend (the audio processing), I used AVFoundation and AVAudioEngine, in order to process the audio and play it back to the user. I also use FileManager to deal with file permissions like copying. I had to do a lot of research on how 8D audio is made, and I had to figure out how to translate that into an app.

Challenges we ran into

I had a lot of trouble with getting the file to read without bugs (if you check my code you can see a lot of debugging statements). The biggest challenge of the app, however, was actually editing the audio to make it 8D. I have no experience whatsoever with AVAudioEngine, so not only did I have to research how 8D audio is made, I also had to learn how to translate that into code to actually edit the music. Most of the time, there was virtually no change to the music and it basically sounded the same. Eventually, after a lot of trial and error, I was able to create an effective 8D audio effect.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

I'm very proud of myself for creating the 8D audio effect. I'm not familiar with audio editing or AVAudioEngine, so being able to do everything that I accomplished made me incredibly proud of myself.

What we learned

I learned a lot about creating 8D audio and two new Apple frameworks, AVFoundation and AVAudioEngine.

What's next for 8Dify

During the hackathon, I originally wanted the file to be downloadable by the user. Unfortunately, I couldn't get that to work, so I made it so the user can playback the audio within the app. In the future, I want the user to be able to download the edited music.

Built With

• avaudioengine
• avfoundation
• swiftui
• xcode