Does any one know if there is good software to perform conversion from (wave or mp3 or other known format) to MIDI? I understand that conversion from audio file to MIDI is a very complex process. I'm currently developing a course project for my bachelor degree that requires manipulating MIDI files.
If you know any good software, I'm opened to suggestions. I prefer software that can also be executed from a shell by passing a file to be converted.
Any help is appreciated.
Edit: With advances in software and hardware, this answer is now out-of-date (note the year it was posted).
This is going to be a terrible process at best and utterly impossible most of the time. The problem is that such software has to identify individual musical notes from the audio stream to convert them into MIDI information. This is complicated by the fact that it also has to identify the the different types of sounds to assign them to different tracks. It is even more complicated by the possibilities of sounds that are not "on-note", leaving it several ways of conveying that in the MIDI stream. And then you have the problem of non-musical audio, such as singing, which is conventionally not even put into MIDI.
You're best bet is to spend time either making your own MIDI tracks, or finding or buying some off the 'net. FWIW, before the popularity of MP3 ringtones, a lot of "polyphonic" ringtones for mobile phones were actually MIDI files.