11 Jan
2005
11 Jan
'05
2:43 a.m.
On Monday 10 January 2005 21.31, Dave Robillard
wrote:
[...]
> I was considering using ChucK, given that it's specifically
> designed for RT performance use and can insert/remove/replace
> pieces of code into the vm while running, but it looks like it
> would be a significant amount of work to adapt the ChucK engine to
> be controlled by another app.
ChucK is still in its early stages - version 1.2 is coming out within
the month, which allows much greater expressiveness with
events, access to shared memory between shreds, events, and
many ways to control ChucK from other sources (via OSC, network,
etc.), and user objects. version 1.1.x.x demonstrates the primary
ChucK concepts of ugen connection, timing, concurrency, and
on-the-fly programming. version 1.2 is aimed at making the language
usable:
http://chuck.cs.princeton.edu/release/soon.html
(1.1 can make much noise already, some examples):
http://wiki.cs.princeton.edu/index.php/ChucK_Sounds
Looks like ChucK is basically designed around the idea
of describing
networks of unit generators, though there does seem to be procedural
style flow control constructs. Maybe those can be use to construct an
event loop for receiving external real time events?
ChucK starts with unit generators, but the primary power of the language
lies in the timing mechanism (as Dave noted) and concurrency. Timing
can go from sub-sample rate to weeks and months, with sample precision.
External real-time events can indeed be polled or waited upon in time
loops.
Anyway, I'll have a closer look at ChucK. It has
some concepts in
common with what I had in mind for future versions of Audiality.
(Running those AGW scripts in real time, all unit generators in
parallel, rather than over whole waveform as it is done now. Time
oriented flow control constructs.)
What is different about the intents of EEL from that of ChucK? If EEL
is aiming to do a lot of the things that ChucK already does, why
not use/embed ChucK with/in audiality (which might be beneficial
to both)? Is it licensing? ChucK is GPL, so that would prevent it
from being used in proprietary ways, but it is possible for the license
to allow special cases to be granted.
I suppose one difference is that EEL is not intended specifically for
sound synthesis whereas ChucK is (but certainly not limited to)?
I need the
guarantee that the audio thread of the language/VM is
100% realtime safe (ala the jack guidelines).
That's a primary design goal for EEL (which is the main difference
from scripting languages in general)