Nightingale – open-source karaoke app that works with any song on your computer

12 hours ago (nightingale.cafe)

Just downloaded source and built this to play around with it. I was a bit surprised that the first thing it did when I ran it was to start downloading binaries from the internet. It went off to fetch FFMpeg from some remote server, but I already have FFMpeg installed. Then it tried and failed to install its own Python interpreter, which is another thing that's already present on the system.

How come this is trying to install its own vendored dependencies, including executable binaries, instead of checking for what's already installed? That approach can lead to both security and performance issues.

Edit: the Python download isn't failing, but rather the application itself is looking for the executable interpreter in `lib` rather than `bin` once the download completes. I built the release tarball in the git repo, and I'm pretty amazed that such a basic error could make it into release code.

Further edit: I tried using the build script in the tarball rather than just doing a `cargo build -r`, and it started trying to install Docker containers! Docker to build a desktop application! What is going on here?

  • It's probably pertinent to mention that the Python installation ecosystem is a hot mess, with multiple ways of installing Python (e.g. standard Python installer, multiple different packages managers on different OSes, Conda, and myriad package managers which can also install Python. And of course, these can all be in different locations, and may have different approaches to installing libraries.

    Which is to say, I don't blame the author for wanting to rely on a single installation that his app can manage and rely on, even though I wish it was different.

  • > instead of checking for what's already installed

    Plenty of software come with their own Python runtime. Even Blender uses its own Python runtime. I can name so many apps with embedded Python runtime: Blender, Houdini, Bitwig, Substance Painter, Krita, etc. Checking for what's already installed isn't the norm. In Krita's case, it uses installed Python to build it... and in the building process it builds another Python runtime for its own!

    This app should have probably bundled the runtime instead of downloading a new one though.

    > install its own vendored dependencies

    > lead to both security and performance issues

    npm install and pip -r theoretically have the same kind of security issue. How many projects on github run this kind of command during build process? My guess is in the order of millions.

  • > How come this is trying to install its own vendored dependencies

    "Why does this new software do X?" is probably answered by "the vibe worked on my system"

  • This is unfortunately becoming more common.

    Just yesterday, I went to try out some cool new AI thing that was here on the front page of HN. It's written in Python. Great, I thought, that means I can put it into a virtualenv and just rm the whole tree when I'm done and my system will be exactly in the same state it was previously.

    But sadly... no... the first time I ran it, this Python program started downloading and installing Node/NPM, and all kinds of other stuff to my machine WITHOUT even asking for permission. Sorry app developers, but my machine and my home directory are my workplace. They are curated property, you are NOT allowed to just install whatever you wish.

    I expect this kind of behavior from programs whose only supported installation method is a curlpipe. (And I do avoid those.) I do not expect it from programs that claim to be installable by pip, or ship their own binaries. These NEED to be called out as vulnerable to supply-chain attacks at worst and extremely disrepectful to users at best.

  • > How come this is trying to install its own vendored dependencies, including executable binaries, instead of checking for what's already installed? That approach can lead to both security and performance issues.

    I've been sympathetic to your viewpoint, and I can see why this kind of thing is becoming more common.

    The idea that users can reliably supply their own vendor libs/execs for applications is a bit of a fantasy. Devs working on fixing issues caused by the user having a strange issue due to the version of Python or whatever that they have installed is largely a waste of time when the application can "simply" ship with the exact dependencies it expects. This is especially true when it comes to open source work. Dealing with weird edge cases because the user has a version of FFMPEG installed that, for whatever reason, is missing h264, is work that nobody asked for. Given that the audience of this kind of app is a general one (not specific at all to devs) then it doesn't make sense to require other system packages to be present; if things like Python and FFMPEG are not required and will be downloaded anyway as part of the app install process, then there's no point in not always doing that. If you think about it, it's hardly different from any other sort of software dependency. The dependencies are just relatively bigger.

    Personally, I have no desire for my applications to use other executables on my system unless I request that they do so explicitly. I'm sympathetic to the idea from a mere efficiency perspective, especially when it comes to developer tooling. But a karaoke app? No offense, but why care? A Python interpreter will be anywhere between 50 and 200 megabytes. FFMPEG is even smaller, especially if you don't enable every single feature and codec. Compared to how ridiculously bloated your average basic mobile app is (without anything like a built in JIT), bundling a desktop application with something like Python provides a lot of power relative to the number of bytes added.

    • > The idea that users can reliably supply their own vendor libs/execs for applications is a bit of a fantasy.

      That's why package managers and OS repos exist. Users shouldn't have to even be aware of this sort of stuff. In this case, though, when the application starts trying to download and install its own dependencies at runtime, instead of everything already being sorted out at build time, the user is made aware of dependency resolution, and now has to deal with the issues involved.

      > This is especially true when it comes to open source work. Dealing with weird edge cases because the user has a version of FFMPEG installed that, for whatever reason, is missing h264, is work that nobody asked for.

      And that's what config tests at build time solve for, and have solved for decades.

  • >How come this is trying to install its own vendored dependencies, including executable binaries, instead of checking for what's already installed? That approach can lead to both security and performance issues.

    Because the person who vibecoded this had no idea they should have been doing that.

    • It’s a desktop app for mostly non-technical users, so bundling the runtime is a deliberate tradeoff to reduce setup friction and machine-specific breakage.

      That said, an optional “use system environment if available” mode could make sense for advanced users. A PR for that would be welcome, as long as it also handles the real complexity involved: platform differences, Python package compatibility, GPU backends, and missing system/compiler flags.

      6 replies →

    • hey both!

      thanks for your feedback and reports, I'd be happy if they are added as issues on github.

      as said in the separate comment, I really wanted an app to be as "grandma-proof" as possible, therefore I really wanted to have one binary that does the magic for you. it's a karaoke app, not a tool that is aimed at engineers.

      we can indeed look at the local packages before downloading an executable, it's just not done yet but might be added in the future.

      I've built this project out of passion and it's 100% open-source and free, so please keep this in mind when criticizing.

      4 replies →

  • welcome to the millenial way of doing things

    always assumes internet is connected

    always assumes everything is trusted

I've been working on a karaoke app called Nightingale. You point it at your music folder and it turns your songs into karaoke - separates vocals from instrumentals, generates word-level synced lyrics, and lets you sing with highlighted lyrics and pitch scoring. Works with video files too.

Everything runs locally on your machine, nothing gets uploaded. No accounts, no subscriptions, no telemetry.

It ships as a single binary for Linux, macOS, and Windows. On first launch it sets up its own isolated Python environment and downloads the ML models it needs - no manual installation of dependencies required.

My two biggest drivers for the creation of this were:

    The lack of karaoke coverage for niche, avant-garde, and local tracks.

    Nostalgia for the good old cheesy karaoke backgrounds with flowing rivers, city panoramas, etc.

Some highlights:

    Stem separation using the UVR Karaoke model (preserves backing vocals) or Demucs

    Automatic lyrics via WhisperX transcription, or fetched from LRCLIB when available

    Pitch scoring with player profiles and scoreboards

    Gamepad support and TV-friendly UI scaling for party setups

    GPU acceleration on NVIDIA (CUDA) and Apple Silicon (CoreML/MPS)

    Built with Rust and the Bevy engine

The whole stack is open source. No premium tier, no "open core" - just the app.

Feedback and contributions welcome.

  • Just tried it with B.E.D - Walk Away[0], unfortunately it lost track of the lyrics after 30 secs (Model is "large-v3"). Will play around a bit more, as it would be great to have a working karaoke generator.

    Some quick feedback:

      - Needs a way to skip for-/backwards during playback to validate the result
      - Sentences seem to be recognized (first letter has uppercasing), but periods aren't added
      - Needs an option to edit results from the track analysis
    

    Thanks for keeping it FOSS!

    [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MFT4H3VoNE

    • hey mate! thanks for your feedback.

      indeed, I'm running to two problems on the analyzer side: 1. align model sliding off (especially w/ chorus/back vocals present) 2. transcript skipping parts of lyrics in lyrics-heavy tracks (I tried a lot of russian rap, lol)

      happy for contributions as I'm not that experienced w/ machine learning side of the project, mostly it was emperical "tweak the parameters and look what is changed"

      1 reply →

  • Amazing work! I am thrilled someone was motivated to approach this problem and develop a creative solution like this. There are very limited options for Karaoke, especially in the FOSS space. Most Karaoke apps are super limited and that's driven many Karaoke enjoyers I know to YouTube in search of the songs they want to sing. This solution would give them the power to do even more songs, even better than what's out there now!

    Questions for you:

    1. What CUDA capability level is necessary for Nvidia GPU accelleration to work?

    3. Are there any plans to support iGPU/NPU accelleration on AMD and Intel? Asking because those chips are most common in the mini computers sold at low cost these days.

    My family members who love Karaoke and will be happy to try this. Looking forward to it!

    • hi!

      1. Maxwell+ should work well 3. I would need to explore, you can join the discord or the mailing list on the website!

      cheers!

  • I just want to say how much I love that you used Dean Blunt in the example video

    • one of my favorite artists and this one is one of my favorite tracks in general. cheers!

  • Excited to try this out. How well does WhisperX deal with lyrics in say Mandarin or Cantonese? Does it output Hanzi?

    • I haven't tried Mandarin and Cantonese, but tried Japanese. back at that time, it performed poorly. however, I've tweaked a bunch of settings since then, so maybe it has changed. Hanzi is a supported font and can be output, but the transcript/alignment quality might not be the best

  • This looks like awesome awesome fun! Will let you know how it runs. What a wonderful idea <3

This gave me a blast to the past to Nightingale, the media player built on top of Firefox. It was a Firefox fork that was aiming to be a more powerful alternative to iTunes/Winamp. But since it was built on Firefox, you could also use it as an all-in-one media player and web browser.

The homepage still exists, but it looks like many of the other pages like the blog and wiki are long gone. It hasn't been active in probably over a decade.

https://getnightingale.com/

Very nice!

I've worked on a small toy project with a similar purpose in the past [1], though it's not nearly as polished as yours, and I've made some questionable decisions here and there.

I have questions about pitch tracking. It seems you do track the pitch for scoring, and there's a line at the top of the screen that seems related but that I can't figure out. For my use case, an important feature of karaoke apps is displaying how "high" the next note should be sung, or at least some hints. Is it something your app can do and I just haven't figured it out? Or would it be a feature request?

[1] https://github.com/eckter/karaoke_helper

  • hi there! pitch scoring is now pretty simplistic and the feature you're describing is not implemented. it's a great feature request tho!

Open source, local and passion driven. The kind of news that make me believes in humanity again. Thank you, can't wait to try it this week-end !

Really nice project, I'm looking forward to trying it!

Would it be possible to process songs on one device, and then use the result in another, or even multiple? Or would it be possible to run as separate server / client?

I ask mainly because the device I connect to my TV is definitely not the most powerful one, so it would be nice if I can preprocess the songs elsewhere.

This looks great, but I don't understand what it's supposed to do. I assumed the idea was "remove the lyrics" but of the 5 songs I tried (from Cry Cry Cry, Indigo Girls, and Suzanne Vega), none seemed to have any change from the original at all - it's showing the words on the screen (and the timing is perfect) but it's not removing the singing at all. How do you turn off the singing?

Nice work! If you are looking for ways to enhance this or complementary routes, one thing I was thinking about recently... As a musician, often I play songs I don't know the lyrics to. It would be cool to have an app that could follow along karaoke style with the words, as I sing and as the band plays. Right now I clip a phone to the mic stand, but after a lyric or two, I lose my place. This is probably multitudes more complex based on every "band/vocals" sounding different, but just something I was thinking about.

  • Yeah I think this is quite tricky. Even spotify screws up the sync halfway through the song somewhat frequently

My wife is a huge karaoke fan. I'm especially interested in the pitch scoring since we usually play the karaoke games on older consoles for that exact feature. Nobody really makes games like that anymore without a subscription (and most of these good modern karaoke platforms are exclusive to east asia anyways). If this works well this could make for some really fun social events, looking forward to trying this.

Big karaoke fan, so thanks for doing this. I'm processing a first test song as I write. The pitch scoring sounds really interesting as both a competitive and maybe also a training tool.

A couple of immediate small pieces of feedback:

* The colour scheme on the queue/nn% buttons is really low contrast - white on pale yellow is very hard to read

* the 'models' button (bottom left) - I assumed this would give me details about which models are available, and the sizes, but instead deleted the downloaded models without warning. Maybe add a 'are you sure you want to...' check?

Looks amazing. I've been using Karafun [1], a paid service, but this seems promising.

[1] https://www.karafun.com/

  • Unfortunately karafun, like so many other systems, has egregious holes in its catalog. I hate playing the “this song? No… this song? No… this song? No…” game.

    • Psst... if you sign up to their Premium tier you can play songs from their "Community" (i.e. user uploaded songs). If you sign up to the "Pro" tier, you can play even more songs that are normally locked from their catalogue (but you'll have to manage rightsholders authorization yourself).

  • Karafun is a paid service? I've seen their karaoke songs on Youtube for over a decade, I thought that was their business model.

    • Yes, the free songs on YouTube aren't customizable: there's a low voice guide that you can't turn off (or turn up...), and you can't change tempo.

      You can do this from their huge catalog of songs, using their official app or their web client: https://www.karafun.com/web/

      Plus, they have music quizzes you can play with many people using smartphones as remote controls. It's super fun for parties where people don't want to sing all the time.

I would like the option to put the original music video as the background, like you can in Ultrastar

>app that works with any song on your computer

Impressive, very nice. Now let's see my death metal collection.

Just joking! Very nice, thanks for open-sourcing it.

  • No joke, feel free to try it! The beauty of the approach is that you don't have any limitations. Just be prepared to degraded experience, sometimes models struggle even with the simplest pop tracks :D

This looks amazing! looking forward to test it on the weekend. Does it work well on a raspberry pi with 4 gigs of ram?

  • oof, since it uses quite heavy models locally I would expect it to struggle on such hardware. M1+ macs & nvidia gpus work the best and fastest.

I am getting a virus detected error when downloading from Chrome.

  • it's a false positive, however feel free to build from the source while I'm figuring out what the virus trigger is about

This is just for English language? I have some older Japanese stuff I would love to sing!

  • so, as answered in one of the other threads - for me the transcript model performed poorly back in the days, however since then I've added lyrics lookup and tweaked a bunch of parameters, so it is worth trying!

So cool! I'll try it with the steam deck. Being able to go to a party with just the deck and a microphone and have a karaoke with any song people want sounds good.

  • I'm not sure whether the analysis would work swiftly enough on steam deck, it might be better to analyze on a desktop device and transfer ~/.nightingale/songs to the steam deck. just saying!

I haven't tried this but I would be very sceptical about the transcription of lyrics. Is there some way to correct errors?

This is great! I thought of doing something like this for Karaoke, but was wondering about the copyright implications of doing it server-side.

We already do this for ingesting podcasts and cutting their clips with text being highlighted as people speak. AssemblyAI also supports speaker diarization.

For videos recorded using our own livestreaming studio, we can bypass all this by using Web STT and TTS APIs resulting in perfect timing and diarization without the need for server side models.

  • It's problematic even client side since you don't have a sync license to show words timed to the song. A bunch of other licenses are needed too for the lyrics themselves and to process the original file into the instrumental.

> separates vocals, transcribes lyrics

ML has come a long way but I have yet to encounter anything that does this reliably with speech, never mind song lyrics.

> works with any song on your computer

I'd be shocked if this is true.

  • it is as good as the models are. it is not perfect, especially for non-major languages, but it works.