22 Sep
2003
22 Sep
'03
11:13 p.m.
I was hoping someone could help me with my first newbie steps in linux audio
programming. I finally made it over to Linux, and discovered that I arrived
here before cubase and fruityloops did. They never did what I wanted them to
anyway. *sob*.
Anyhoo, now that I'm over them, I would love to get cracking on some chunky
audio projects but I'm a bit unsure of a kind of "best practises" approach
for audio programming. What should I study? Whats the best way to go?!
I have done some messing around with SDL and that seems pretty cool - cross
platform, good graphic capabilites, and the audio is really simple. The faq
says "low level support for audio" - is it low enough?! Is it useless?
Ive really gotten into audio programming, but the stuff I'm making is
currently all over the place (like this message) using different snippets of
code and tutorials I've found here and there. Half of the sources are old,
so I don't know which path I should be following.
Any hints would be appreciated!
Earle
22 Sep
22 Sep
11:37 p.m.
I was hoping someone could help me with my first newbie
steps in linux audio
programming. I finally made it over to Linux, and discovered that I arrived
here before cubase and fruityloops did. They never did what I wanted them to
anyway. *sob*.
Anyhoo, now that I'm over them, I would love to get cracking on some chunky
audio projects but I'm a bit unsure of a kind of "best practises" approach
for audio programming. What should I study? Whats the best way to go?!
[ OK LADers, you all knew I'd be in here like greased lightning :) ]
well, JACK (the JACK Audio Connection Kit; http://jackit.sf.net/)
makes a number of things much easier for you. You forget about
configuring audio interfaces and all that stuff, and instead deal with
a high-level abstraction that also takes care of many other aspects of
real-time audio programming.
but what's more interesting about JACK is that its an
inter-application audio routing system, which means that your
application can send/receive audio data from other apps just as easily
as it can from an audio interface. or both. or neither.
so there you have it: a simple model for real time audio programming,
allowing you to focus on what really matters (algorithms and UI
design), plus inter-app audio routing. what could be better?
disclaimer: i am the primary author of JACK :) i'm also the primary
author of ardour, one of the largest JACK clients (not unsuprising
given that its modelled on being a complete DAW).
for coding examples, i'd cite freqtweak and ecasound as 2 things to
look at after you're done with the JACK example clients. ardour has
lots of good stuff too, as does muse and rosegarden (though these two
focus slightly more on MIDI than on audio).
--p
23 Sep
23 Sep
12:27 a.m.
Anyhoo, now that I'm over them, I would love to
get
cracking on some chunky
audio projects but I'm a bit unsure of a kind of
"best practises" approach
for audio programming. What should I study? Whats
the best way to go?!
Everyone on the list is gonna hate me for saying this
:), but do a simple audio app in OSS first. Like, a
sample player. Only then will you appreciate what ALSA
and JACK has to offer.
Also, if you are making something for other UNIXen as
well (like me), OSS is more widely supported. I don't
think anyone other than geeks on this list would
install ALSA w/o OSS compatibility.
I have done some messing around with SDL and that
seems pretty cool - cross
platform, good graphic capabilites, and the audio is
really simple. The faq
says "low level support for audio" - is it low
enough?! Is it useless?
SDL is cool. I like it, but I mostly just use it for
games because as far as sound goes, it's very basic.
It kinda uses the "lest common denominator" approach
for cross-platform capability. Last time I used it for
audio, It only supported 8-bit sound, and I don't
think that's changed since then.
Ive really gotten into audio programming, but the
stuff I'm making is
currently all over the place (like this message)
using different snippets of
code and tutorials I've found here and there. Half
of the sources are old,
so I don't know which path I should be following.
Any hints would be appreciated!
If you know your Calculus, a good book that will
really help is "A Digital Signal Processing Primer" by
Ken Steiglitz.
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com
12:43 a.m.
Also, if you are making something for other UNIXen as
well (like me), OSS is more widely supported. I don't
think anyone other than geeks on this list would
install ALSA w/o OSS compatibility.
IMHO, if portability is a concern, PortAudio is by far the best choice
to use as a hardware abstraction layer.
4:49 a.m.
Thomas Webb <magusofthedark(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
SDL is cool. I like it, but I mostly just use it for
games because as far as sound goes, it's very basic.
It kinda uses the "lest common denominator" approach
for cross-platform capability. Last time I used it for
audio, It only supported 8-bit sound, and I don't
think that's changed since then.
Seems to me that if you turn up the resolution enough
that you'd have a perfect base for a Kyma sort of thing.
http://www.symbolicsound.com/brochure/index.html
16 bit is native... you can still call stuff and you've
still got hardware capabilities.
6:05 a.m.
On Mon, Sep 22, 2003 at 07:12:35PM -0700, Thomas Webb wrote:
Thats a bit like saying "try repeatadly stabbing yourself in the leg, then
when you stop it will feel great!" ;)
I agree with Paul (see, it does happen ;), JACK is the best audio API for
linux, and its portable to MacOS X. If you want more portability, use
PortAudio.
Anyhoo, now that I'm over them, I would love
to get
cracking on some chunky
audio projects but I'm a bit unsure of a kind of
"best practises" approach
for audio programming. What should I study? Whats
the best way to go?!
Everyone on the list is gonna hate me for saying this
:), but do a simple audio app in OSS first. Like, a
sample player. Only then will you appreciate what ALSA
and JACK has to offer. SDL is cool. I like it, but I mostly just use it for
games because as far as sound goes, it's very basic.
It kinda uses the "lest common denominator" approach
for cross-platform capability. Last time I used it for
audio, It only supported 8-bit sound, and I don't
think that's changed since then.
Its pretty hard to build UIs out of it, I tried and gave up (cf.
PressGang/JAMin). I think GTK and Qt are just better for that kind of
thing.
- Steve
7:17 a.m.
On Tuesday 23 September 2003 09.50, Steve Harris wrote:
[...SDL...]
Its pretty hard to build UIs out of it, I tried and
gave up (cf.
PressGang/JAMin). I think GTK and Qt are just better for that kind
of thing.
Tried ParaGUI?
Anyway, I still think GTK+, Qt or FLTK is more suitable for "normal"
applications. They're not quite as portable as SDL (which runs on
pretty much anything with some sort of display), but they do multiple
windows, and they're GUI toolkits, as opposed to low level "direct
rendering" APIs.
That said, I'm investigating using SDL and (probably) ParaGUI for a
musical application, but that design is closer to a keyboard
controlled tracker than a typical GUI application, so even ParaGUI is
a bit high level...
//David Olofson - Programmer, Composer, Open Source Advocate
.- Audiality -----------------------------------------------.
| Free/Open Source audio engine for games and multimedia. |
| MIDI, modular synthesis, real time effects, scripting,... |
`-----------------------------------> http://audiality.org -'
--- http://olofson.net --- http://www.reologica.se ---
7:01 a.m.
On Tuesday 23 September 2003 04.12, Thomas Webb wrote:
[...]
SDL is cool. I like it, but I mostly just use it for
games because as far as sound goes, it's very basic.
It kinda uses the "lest common denominator" approach
for cross-platform capability. Last time I used it for
audio, It only supported 8-bit sound, and I don't
think that's changed since then.
It changed long before 1.2, AFAIK. For as long as I've been using SDL
(before 1.2 was released), it has supported various 8 and 16 bit
formats, in mono and stereo.
However, that's about as far as it goes. It's output only, and there's
no MIDI support. (SDL_mixer can play MIDI files, though, but on some
platforms it supports only rendering to audio through Timidity, and
there's no low level MIDI I/O API.)
//David Olofson - Programmer, Composer, Open Source Advocate
.- Audiality -----------------------------------------------.
| Free/Open Source audio engine for games and multimedia. |
| MIDI, modular synthesis, real time effects, scripting,... |
`-----------------------------------> http://audiality.org -'
--- http://olofson.net --- http://www.reologica.se ---
3:20 p.m.
On Fri, Sep 12, 2003 at 11:00:19AM +1000, Earle wrote:
I was hoping someone could help me with my first
newbie steps in linux audio
programming. I finally made it over to Linux, and discovered that I arrived
here before cubase and fruityloops did. They never did what I wanted them to
anyway. *sob*.
Consider finding a project which does what you want and helping it.
Even if you merely plan to explore some of your own ideas, it might
be easier to do it within the framework of an existing app. And then
when your ideas grow into a full app, you won't find that you've
created yet another ____. If you in interested in creating something
like cubase or protools, definitely check out ardour. If you like traktor,
check out gdam. Can't say offhand what is closest to fruityloops although
gdam (my project) isn't too far. There are midi editors, synthesis
networks, realtime processing engines, etc. Check out
http://linux-sound.org/ for a list of existing projects.
If you do start your own project, the best way to ensure the effort
can be reused is to use JACK for audio.
Considering toolkits, gtk+ is pretty nice and reasonably easy to
extend with new widgets. It is c, but very object oriented (there are
other language bindings). The biggest drawback is portability, the
native osx version is in early stages and the windows version required
cygwin or similar last time i tried. I have written some pixmapped
gtk+ widgets useful for audio - scrollbars, meters, buttons, and dials
created from your custom images. You are, of course, free to use those.
-geoff
7533
days inactive
7534
days old
linux-audio-dev@lists.linuxaudio.org
8 comments
7 participants
participants (7)
-
David Olofson -
Earle -
Lance Blisters -
Paul Davis -
Rick Taylor -
Steve Harris -
Thomas Webb