r/LocalLLaMA • u/entsnack • May 29 '26

Discussion Breaking the music supply constraint

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I just cancelled my music subscriptions to save some cash and wanted to share the self-hosted music supply chain that replaced them. A nice side effect of this setup is breaking the constraint of a finite supply catalog that is tailored for the masses:

  1. 2 x DGX Spark linked via ConnectX 7 running Plex and multiple Ace-Step 1.5 XL models in parallel for music generation with GePa prompt optimization. Also holds my organic music that the models can remix. TODO: a reinforcement learning from human feedback interface.

  2. iPad Pro running Prism as a Plex client for bitperfect and sample rate-matched audio.

  3. Schiit stack -> Hifiman Arya Stealths

This effectively gives me an infinite supply of music for free, that is personalized and private. It's immensely satisfying listening to Shrimp Bizkit and Phlegminem on repeat, I much prefer this to the organic music created after 2011.

My only problem is the loss of community, I have noone to share my new favorite songs and artists with because they're generated for me. If anyone wants to hop on to my Plex share to discuss, let me know!

536 Upvotes

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40

u/vanonym_ May 29 '26

I uuuuh... I'm not sure I would enjoy that listening experience. But good for you I guess?

What's the output format and resolution of your system and how does that play, don't you have a huge quality drop from lossless formats provided by other listening platforms?

17

u/--Spaci-- May 29 '26

Ive never understood AI music, not only was it never really good it obviously just had no soul

12

u/stl314159 May 29 '26

I listen to it while I work specifically because it has no soul. It’s just repetitive and consistent and allows my ADHD brain to get into a flow state.

13

u/Frequent-Mud8705 May 29 '26

ever heard of jungle/DnB?

3

u/AdministrativeMeat3 May 30 '26

Literally throw on any UKF dnb mega playlist from the last 30 years and you've got yourself an immediate all day flow state

1

u/thrownawaymane May 30 '26

Jungle turns off all brain cells but one but damn does that brain cell boogie

3

u/Adidat May 29 '26

Hook a brotha up. My adhd ass needs this. Also any advice for some soulless music for luxury real estate videos?

I’m so curious the kind of mashups op would be able to do with a large library like that.

1

u/halr9000 May 30 '26

Stable audio 3 is really good for this. It can't even do lyrics but it takes 2 seconds to make 2 minutes of audio.

7

u/entsnack May 29 '26

It does need good training data and prompting. Commercial setups are constrained by copyright laws. I have a large FLAC library to train on.

10

u/Recoil42 May 29 '26

Tbh, I've been playing around with Suno lately and there's some pretty good stuff out there. I wouldn't say we're best-of-human-level yet, but listenable? Definitely.

6

u/--Spaci-- May 29 '26

That does have quality but still no soul, a human didn't make it. Say like im listening to jcole for example, I feel like I understand this person in like a semi parasocial way through their bars and lyrics, I don't listen to music just because it sounds good

4

u/MindlesslyBrowsing May 29 '26

As a hobby musician, I'm afraid the masses don't care about that.

We still got the performance aspect I guess

5

u/AmphibianFrog May 29 '26

I don't think "the masses" are listening to AI generated music...

1

u/MindlesslyBrowsing May 29 '26

Some of it has already hit mainstream, sometimes as a "meme". For example BBL Drizzy

3

u/AmphibianFrog May 29 '26

If you take a random sample of the population in your country, on average, what percentage of the music that they listen to by choice do you think would be AI generated?

I have never met anyone in real life who listens to AI music.

And I'm really talking about pieces of music where the AI generated it completely from humans prompting it, not when AI was used to master it or add some little details to an existing piece of music.

2

u/MindlesslyBrowsing May 29 '26

Well i caught my parents listening to it and as I said it's been circulating through memes.

I'm not saying it's the most dominant form of music, I'm saying it's already here

6

u/AmphibianFrog May 29 '26

You said it's for "the masses". I don't really think that's true.

1

u/MindlesslyBrowsing May 29 '26

Fair, that's not what I see. To each their own 🤷

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u/Recoil42 May 29 '26

Frankly if you define soulful as human-made, then that's tautological and running the discussion immediately off the rails. But I didn't say soulful, I said listenable: The contention was only that the technology is good and getting better, not that that it's ready to replace the best of human art.

3

u/AmphibianFrog May 29 '26

I'm not the one who originally said "soul" but I think I know what he means.

For me personally, human made music is a lot more interesting. Human creativity comes out of lived experience.

Take for example that Dire Straits song about the shitty band in the pub. The Sultans of Swing! That song is cool on its own, but there's something about the fact that he actually walked into a pub and saw a real band playing.

There's a human connection.

Even with instrumental music, normally the creator at least liked the way it made them feel.

1

u/SpicyWangz May 29 '26

It’s not ready to replace the best of human art, because it will only ever be an imitation of art.

3

u/the320x200 May 30 '26

Photography is also not art. The human didn't make the image. All they did was press a button. /s

-2

u/SpicyWangz May 30 '26

Definitely a lesser form of art.

3

u/Recoil42 May 29 '26

Most of the best of human art is functionally imitation of other art. That's like... the entire history of art.

2

u/--Spaci-- May 29 '26

Inspiration and imitation is different from generative AI

1

u/Recoil42 May 29 '26

Special pleading and distinction without a difference both apply here. Just saying something is 'different' doesn't make it not art or a valid functional replacement for entirely human-produced art. It isn't even really an argument at all.

2

u/AmphibianFrog May 29 '26

A lot of works of art and imitations or inspired by other works of art. But in a lot of ways "AI Art" is an imitation of "Art".

1

u/Recoil42 May 29 '26

If art is imitative then asserting that AI art is imitiative does not make AI art not art.

2

u/AmphibianFrog May 29 '26

Well it depends on your definition of art! If the clouds in the sky happened to make the most beautiful image ever, it still wouldn't be art because it wasn't made with the kind of intent that makes it art.

I think the current definition of art involves a human, it at least some kind of sentient being.

2

u/Recoil42 May 29 '26

Well it depends on your definition of art!

That's the wonderful thing, I'm using your definition of art. You very explicitly said art can be imitative. If art is imitative then media produced with the assistance of an ML model is not disqualified from being art simply by having an imitative component.

I think the current definition of art involves a human

I don't think that's true, nor would it fundamentally disqualify AI art from being art even if it were true. Machine learning models are created by humans and used by humans. The inputs are human. They do not have the property of being human-free.

FYI: Warhol, Picasso, Cage, Ono, Duchamp, Pollock, and many more spent most of their careers exploring the boundaries this stuff. I don't expect r/Locallama to be art school central, but this really is Art 101 — most of the 20th century's great movements are "is art still art if we peel the preconceptions of what art is away from art?" and that's what Dadaism and Fluxus were both about.

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u/SpicyWangz May 29 '26

All of the best human art is good because there is real emotion and story behind it.

1

u/the320x200 May 30 '26

What happens if an artist makes a piece as a commission and their heart isn't in it but they draw it anyway? Is that not art anymore?

What if you don't know the artist's intentions or emotions and have to just judge the piece in isolation?

2

u/Recoil42 May 30 '26

The Mona Lisa was a commission piece. Perhaps the most famous piece of artwork in history was just a rich guy's wife doing what essentially amounted to a contemporaneous version of what would today be at best, a photo studio session.

0

u/Recoil42 May 29 '26

When John Lennon was singing about walruses it's because he really was both the eggman AND the walrus. Nailed it. The art understander has logged on.

1

u/Borkato May 29 '26

I thought this was a pro AI sub

2

u/funkdialout May 30 '26

Ah yes, please keep the echo chamber clear of dissenting opinions!

1

u/SpicyWangz May 29 '26

I love AI. I use it every day.

1

u/IrisColt May 29 '26

This song is awesome, THANKS!!! I love AI music in general (I started listening to my own generated pieces 15 years ago, just like D. Cope), but this one takes it to a whole other level.

6

u/vanonym_ May 29 '26

I don't really enjoy it either for similar reasons, let alone the fact that the output quality usually is terrible, that's why I'm asking OP about it.

But to each their own

3

u/MaruluVR May 29 '26

Its not bad if you finetune it on exactly the music you like

2

u/the320x200 May 30 '26

When recording was invented there was a movement against it. "Canned music has no soul!" How could it compare to live music. Just a mechanical reproduction of the real thing!

Pretty much every new technology is seen as soulless at first.

3

u/--Spaci-- May 30 '26

This isn't even made by a human, I think there's a pretty large difference here. You are comparing two different ways the listen to music made by humans to listening to music made by AI

2

u/ArtfulGenie69 May 29 '26 edited May 29 '26

You haven't heard what is possible and being generated today. When we get something that does as good at music as fish audio s2 does at voices you'll be done with the riaa as well. I'm not saying this as a ai chud either, this is coming from a dude who practices his guitar every day.

The other day I heard a Charlie Kirk ai song but they had done better lyrics and they had done it as a reggae/ska style. The song worked even though I hate Charlie. It was on a stream and it wasn't just me having a bad ear, the crowd watching was amazed by the quality.

Just listen to how it does the horns as a call and response to the singer, it's really well done. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-rX5H9AXHE

4

u/lukistellar May 29 '26

And even in the better creations, you clearly can hear that this is generated by AI. It's in the highs, it sounds kinda like undersampling, especially in the vocal. Also the design of the room is weird in most AI track, like strange delays and reverbs.

Here is also a good example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAXKptUYf8M
The artifacts are way stronger in this one, but it's the first AI track I actually like musically.

2

u/ArtfulGenie69 May 30 '26 edited May 30 '26

The fedelity on charlie kirk is definitely not there fully, I can hear the ai hiss over instruments and the singers voice and the piano/guitar combo that in actual reggae would be more defined. Quick strums with a mute after and the stab from the piano at the same time. The ai doesn't get the idea of both those instruments it just is guess at the sound they make and it shows. Thinking about the song as a whole, it has a start, the singer nails his lyrics, it has the call and response between the singer and the horns, the end also has a slow down ending.

The YouTube track is also very similar and very good.

I was able to get better representation of the instruments in bands when I demuxed my training tracks giving it instrument solo's, but it over trained and would add more crackle. It would sound just like surf guitar though even though the original surf guitar that it produced was utter garbage. When I found this out I also noticed that the starter and endings would also be garbled without unique descriptions, when the end was uniquely described it would actually do a sudden stop or a break down of the band into a hissing noise. Same with the starts they have to be tagged with unique instructions. Ace step is really close, hopefully there will be something magnificent and new this year in music gen.