XWMG-1 Audio Watermark Generator is a standalone application (utility) that allows writing/reading inaudible text messages in your audio files.
Can be used for protecting audio files in broadcasting / audio production.

Featuring:

• Supported audio formats: uncompressed .WAV, .AIF/.AIFF.
• Unlimited count of watermarks.
• Overwriting an existing watermark is disabled.
• Mono, Stereo, Quadro, 5.1 and 7.1 audio track support.
• Watermark length up to 23 characters.
• Resistance to most audio hacker's attacks.
• Easy to use and operate.

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS:

• 1.5GHz CPU with SSE2
• 4Gb RAM
• Platform: Windows [32-bit, 64-bit], Mac OS X [10.7 and above]

Price: $42


DEMO for PC: http://www.xeniumaudio.com/server_file_send.php?download_file=XWMG-1&manual=0
DEMO for MAC: http://www.xeniumaudio.com/server_file_send.php?download_file=XWMG-1&manual=0&xMAC=1

Demo version can work only with files no longer than 1min.

 

what do say guys? does this thing work as protection of your rights?

 

Not really sure how this would protect your music. It won't stop anyone ripping your tracks from Youtube/Soundcloud etc and, if you should come across one of your tracks being claimed by another person then you already have the track datestamped on Youtube/Soudcloud plus you can produce the master recording and multitrack to prove your case if needed.

 

I always encourage people to protect their personal stuff but this is really not the way... if you support this things in a couple of years we will have all sort of watermarked samples... even that library you couldn't afford to buy.... imagine loads of samples adding signals all over your tracks... this is a dumb way to protect your audio... be smart, there are other ways to do it.... after all you're not a superproducer that every creation is an unbelievable thing... I'm talking in general... anyway, at the end you're free to do anything... my 2 cents ;P

 

what happens if Youtube/Soundclouds has gotten copyright claims against you and takes them down like i have had happened with some of my original tracks ? Yes you can re-upload after that but the timestamp is long gone

also another thing that i have been thinking lately , some people say you can prove you are the original composer of a track in a court with your timestamped project files right ? well if i was a lawyer and i am not, the first thing to do is to counter the timestamped project files credibility just by mentioning that anyone can change his pc date through the bios or runasdate programs thus affecting his project's stamp. You just lost the court fight and your compositions copyright

now with this program i can supposedly put my name in a track thru inaudible frequencies saying for example my name and the date i composed it , still in court who is to say that one cant say i put the watermark in the track after i stole it from the other guy (the real track thief) , even if i am really the original creator ? I mean after all the track thief will simply remake it using his own synths and sounds so the watermark won't be in there. Some really complicated stuff

 

I think this would be pretty handy if you were sending digital dubs to DJ's so you could tell who leaked a track if it happens

 

Well, "inaudible" leads to the conclusion this watermarking happens beyond the audible frequency range. A high-cut/low-cut filter will take care of that. And if they are within the audible frequency range, bouncing the final mix will take care of it. And watermarking a song? In a world without transcoding maybe...

 

Dear R2R, please take this thing down!

 

Hi! Watermarks can be removed with 5kHz low pass filtering. But will you use this result? Аny way, all suggestions are welcome!

 

1) "...does the tool repeat the whole 23 chars on the whole file" - Generally speaking, yes. We have just few seconds with no mark. "...how does it alter the sound?" - You can try it yourself with XWMG-1 DEMO. (IMHO >>90..97% listeners can't sense it.) And you can't mark a file with silence. 3) "...how do you overwrite an existing watermark" - currently it's impossible. You need to get "no marked" track and mark it again.

 

So I tested this. This really works. Partially. It does marks and if we decode- it finds them. But if we rerender the audio it does not work. If we rerender with saving our watermarks, it pop-ups that there is an error to save the file. There is a message that we can't save the file with watermarks. So we must resave this without metadata saving. Try this with rx.

 

This soft successfully tested on .mp3, .ogg conversion, filtering, resampling and adding reverberation, but rx.. Do you mean the Izotope RX Post Production Suite? Please describe your operations sequence more in detail.

 

Last edited: Jul 23, 2016

I did this in izotope rx, yes. I took a short audio file wav pcm, marked it, then decode it and yes, your software finds them. But I opened this marked file, reversed it, pitched it down. And I can't save this reprocessed file with watermarks. So, with all metadata saving (to save all watermarks, other info) there's rx window that it can't be saved. But it can be saved without saving metadata. After that your software can't find watermarks in that file, because option "Save all metadata" was off due to problems with saving. So, either export without metadata and watermarks or it can not be saved at all because of an error. This error possibly caused by your software, because I have never seen this error before. So resaving bypassed all metadata.

 

XeniumAudio, do you want to see licecap gifs of this process, or I can just quote the error message.

 

Maybe I just don't understand your software, you speak about filtering, etc. But I just don't hear any sound produced by your software. I thought it is just metadata marking only, not audio. I really don't hear it. If there's a sound, I will try to null phases. Still interested in this software..

 

Thank you for feedback, we'll try to reproduce this error, but we can already say, that watermark resistance to reversing is not provided. Could you also say how deep was your pitching? The quote of the error message could be enough. P.s. Watermark data are not save in metadata. How does it work, example: We have MegaHit.wav file. After watermarking, we get new file _MegaHit.wav. The source MegaHit.wav still has no marks.

 

Last edited: Jul 23, 2016

So, XeniumAudio, possibly it was my problem. Something wrong with metadata saving in RX, but removing of watermarks can be done by reversing audio vice-versa; later I'll try with pitching again, re-editing/cutting into pieces etc. But this watermarking a bit noticeable to ears in about 6-7 kHz spectrum yeah? I noticed on sonograms that there are reconstructions in this 6-7 kHz area...some kind of replacing of "cubics", causing artifacts....really interesting programm
Also one thing - levels after that changed a bit (quieter) and steep low-cut filter at 21kHz (if 44.1 kHz wav)

 

1)"..but removing of watermarks can be done by reversing audio vice-versa..." - if you play a file in reverse mode you can't find the marks, but in this case that looks like a new art, not original source, and there is no need to protect it. (We are thinking about impoving our soft to avoid this effect, but currently we doubt). If we reverse a reversed file, all marks will appear again. 2)"..levels after that changed a bit (quieter)" - yeah, to avoid possible overloading, hovever you should use some limiter/compressor/leveler to correct output level if you want. Anyway we try to minimize distortions in our digital processing, and on most non professional acoustic systems, watermarks are "invisible".

 

Yea, that's interesting. Maybe the more invisible in the area of extreme highs like in 15kHz-18kHz? Options to choose the range (like noise-shaping in dithering), maybe less effective in some cases, but invisible. Option to make them louder/quieter?
It's a really good starting point, maybe in near future it will be a super product, more "customizable".
Or this one you released to make as "Free" or "Donationware", and version with extended options/quality/loudness/more chars/etc.to choose - "Pro Version" (means, paid version for extended stuff). Just my IMHO)