Hacker News Reader

While I find Shazam to be amazing, I find SoundHound's capabilities even better in terms of identifying a song based on humming the tune or hearing a live version.

I was at a live jazz concert last night, and the trio started playing a riff on tune I recognized but couldn't exactly place. SoundHound nailed it (Sonny Rollins "Four"), while Shazam had no idea.

View on HN

That's because that's not how Shazam's recognition works (unless they have a secondary mechanism). Shazam is very sensitive to time and frequency features of specific recordings, which is also what makes it so robust in noisy environments. Having both apps is handy for their relative strengths.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com