[linux-audio-user] Re: [linux-audio-dev] music engine

[Patrick Stinson]

Nice work with that screenshot.

The hard part is finding an engine that appears light-weight to the
application code. The engine has to never xrun, and allow me to make
calls like sound.set_tempo(140.0), sound.start_on_beat(2345), and
channel.set_volume(.678) without worrying about threads. Considering
how many people want to learn a graphical kit and write audio apps,
these requirements seem only natural.

I've been trying to put the pksampler(.sf.net) together for a long
time and have always stumbled on the engine; and every time its the
communication mecahnism. I can re-write Ableton Live with qt, and even
make it fast in python (which escapes the linux-only concept, mind you
:)) - that's not hard. What is hard is finding an engine that lets me
focus on my GUI as opposed to the engine or *anything* related to
communicating with the engine (besides the above calls, of course).
Yes, I'm being picky. I think I've thrown away enough C,C++, and now
python code to be picky.

I'm still sifting through the suggestions above, most I have seen,
some I have not.


BTW, I write for touchscreens, so I want an Ableton Live with big
freakin widgets!


On 4/6/06, carmen <ix at replic.net> wrote:
> > I heard from someone at Ableton that one guy wrote the Live engine in
> > about 3 months.
>
> yeah its not that complex. all you need is something that can play audio files realtime at varying pitches/speeds and apply FX chains, and a GUI to facilitate the arrangement and FX parameterization..
>
> i was able to whip up a LIVE-esque timeline GUI in an afternoon using the Tk wavesurfer library: http://whats-your.name/pr/seq.png but have yet to find the optimal backend. heres my investigations so far:
>
>  PD and xsample~/dssi~:  has the raw materials, but unfortunately doesnt work on amd64, and it its lack of subpatch polyphony means you would have to preallocate a set limit of active channels..and even a bit of disk access to load soundfiles is enough to get it kicked out of the jack graph due to its utter nonthreadedness..
>
>  SC and Chuck: would likely work as well, but AFAIK neither one supports LADSPA or DSSI at the moment, SCLang definitely doesnt work on x86_64, and Chuck segfaulted as well but i'm guessing since its newer it was designed with 64bit compatibility and mind and the crash is some other issue
>
>  SooperLooper + OSC-aware LADSPA Rack and Jack Patcher: seems like the jack graph would get crazy quick, but i will probably try this next, since the above options are out for me at the moment unless i setup a 32bit chroot, but maybe i will get good enough at C to be able to port sooperlooper to dssi~, since Om has eveyrhting else i'd need except a decent realtime-resampling audiofile module..
>


--
Patrick Kidd Stinson
http://www.patrickkidd.com/
http://pkaudio.sourceforge.net/
http://pksampler.sourceforge.net/