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Intel introduces FREE OpenVINO AI-powered plugins for Audacity

By 10 Comments3 Mins Read
Intel OpenVINO AI-powered plugins for Audacity: No internet connection required.

Intel created the OpenVINO toolkit (open source) to more efficiently integrate AI into a typical workflow (no internet connection required).

OpenVINO aims to deliver accurate results while optimizing hardware use by running AI models on supported accelerators, like CPU, GPU, and NPU.

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Intel’s Audacity plugin suite includes AI-powered effects, generators, and analyzers.

These AI tools run 100% locally without an internet connection, and I’m sure this news will convince more potential users to try them.

The featured plugins are Music Separation, Noise Suppression, Music Generation & Continuation, and Whisper Transcription.

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It’s fitting that the first plugin deals with track separation since that brought many of us to Audacity years ago.

My first interaction with Audacity came through looking for instrumentals and acapella versions for beat-making and remixes.

Now, we have AI giving us the choice of two stems (Vocals/Instruments) or four stems (Vocals/Drums/Bass/Other Instruments).

AI stem separation has been around for a few years; we’ve seen services like LALAL.AI improve over time, and although not perfect, it’s come a long way.

The Noise Suppression plugin removes background noise from any sample containing spoken audio.

Again, many existing tools tackle the problem of unwanted background noise, but anything that makes it faster and easier is welcome.

The next plugin is where I have reservations about the advent of AI in music: Music Generation & Continuation.

This plugin allows users to generate snippets of music from a text prompt or a continuation from an existing snippet.  For me, it’s a fine line between helping and replacing the musician.

We aren’t there yet, so I try to see the positives in what we can learn through AI, but if we ever reach a point when someone has a hit record with no personal input other than typing, make me a dance track that sounds like Tom Jones singing Gangnam Style, I’ll be pretty sad.

The last plugin is Whisper Transcription, which should be very handy for podcasters. One of the cool things here is that it can translate as well as transcribe. You can specify the source language or use the plugin’s auto-detection process.

There’s just one day left to enter our Mode Audio Airspace giveaway (the promo ends on November 15, 2024), so if you haven’t entered, do it now, and good luck!

Download: OpenVINO AI Plugins (FREE)

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James is a musician and writer from Scotland. An avid synth fan, sound designer, and coffee drinker. Sometimes found wandering around Europe with an MPC in hand.

10 Comments

  3. Exink

     on

    Not to set off alarm bells, but I feel we are getting closer to that, creating “a dance track that sounds like Tom Jones singing Gangnam Style” with the advances of today’s technology. I feel very sorry for you who see it that way, but there is not much else that can be done.

    Apart from that, the other plugins have been very useful to me, especially the vocal separation and noise reduction. However, I still haven’t gotten used to the fact that transcripts are saved as audio tags, but it’s nice to have that option anyway.

    Reply
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