The Audio Effects Ontology

In this paper we present the Audio Effects Ontology for the ontological representation of audio effects in music production workflows. Designed as an extension to the Studio Ontology, its aim is to provide a framework for the detailed description and sharing of information about audio effects, their implementations, and how they are applied in realworld production scenarios. The ontology enables capturing and structuring data about the use of audio effects and thus facilitates reproducibility of audio effect application, as well as the detailed analysis of music production practices. Furthermore, the ontology may inform the creation of metadata standards for adaptive audio effects that map high-level semantic descriptors to control parameter values. The ontology is using Semantic Web technologies that enable knowledge representation and sharing, and is based on modular ontology design methodologies. It is evaluated by examining how it fulfils requirements in a number of production and retrieval use cases.