Re: Defeating Music Identification Apps - Adding Gaussian Noise?

On Wednesday, April 8, 2026 10:28:40 PM Central Daylight Time Ivan K wrote:
> Also I have read how one can add a bit of gaussian noise to a sound file,
> and while to the human ear, the music sounds identical, adding this noise
> can interfere with or prevent these identification apps from identifying
> the music.

An easy way to think about this is consider what would happen if you played 
music on a device with slightly worse signal-to-noise ratio, which is what 
additive Gaussian noise would be, just a slight increase in white noise.

Would a music identification app be useful at all if it failed to work if you 
had less than studio quality playback equipment?  Obviously not, so I would 
say it is equally obvious that it is very unlikely to be true that simply 
adding an unnoticeably small amount of white noise to a sound file will defeat 
an identification app. 

-- 
Chris Caudle