Data Flow

PATCHBAY’s end-to-end data flow is: Audio → Preprocess → Chunk plan → Anchor prompting → Model inference → Reconstruction → Postprocess → Export.

Pipeline overview

flowchart TD
  A[Audio input] --> B[Decode / normalize dtype]
  B --> C{Input AudioFX?}
  C -- yes --> D[Apply input effects]
  C -- no --> E[Continue]
  D --> F[Chunk planning]
  E --> F
  F --> G[Anchor prompting per chunk]
  G --> H[Inference per chunk]
  H --> I["Reconstruction (overlap-add)"]
  I --> J{Output AudioFX?}
  J -- yes --> K[Apply effects per stream]
  J -- no --> L[Export]
  K --> L

Loading

1. Load & decode audio

   • Input audio is loaded and converted to a floating point waveform (multi-channel supported).
   • Optional resampling to the model’s expected sample rate is performed.

2. (Optional) Input AudioFX

   • Any AudioFX assigned to the input stream is applied before chunking (see AudioFX Plugins).

3. Chunk planning

   • Long audio is split into windows (max_len_s) with overlap (overlap_s) to reduce boundary artifacts.
   • See Chunking and Chunking & Reconstruction.

4. Anchor prompting

   • Anchors are clipped to valid ranges and mapped into each chunk.
   • Each chunk’s prompt is constructed according to anchor_mode.
   • See Anchor Prompting Internals and Anchor Algorithms.

5. Model inference

   • The SAM-Audio model is invoked per chunk via the backend adapter.
   • See Backend API and Backend Integration.

6. Reconstruction

   • Chunk outputs are stitched back into full-length target/residual using overlap-add with windowing.
   • See Chunking & Reconstruction.

7. (Optional) Output AudioFX

   • AudioFX can be applied separately to target and residual streams (and persisted per stream).
   • See AudioFX Plugin API.

8. Write outputs

   • target.wav and residual.wav (or user-selected paths) are written.
   • See Export & Files.

Where this is implemented

• Orchestration: patchbay_backend/pipeline.py
• Chunking: patchbay_backend/chunking.py
• Anchors: patchbay_backend/anchors.py
• SAM-Audio adapter: patchbay_backend/separator.py
• GUI worker: patchbay_desktop_gui/gui/worker.py

Last updated: 2026-01-24