6 ms·

Rust for real time audio analysis

72 points by blacksmythe 9y ago

mediocreguy 9y ago
Just curious, why was GO not looked at as an option?
- alexnewman 9y ago
  mediocreguy why go and not python or tcl?
  - alexnewman 9y ago
    "The main problem with the Python version of this product - or subproduct - was that it was pretty unstable, hard to extend and hard to debug" -> I assume go would be worse. This is where rust's hefty language comes in handy
dljsjr 9y ago
How do you handle real-time thread priorities and CPU affinity? I work in soft real-time software as well (feedback control for humanoid robots) and I've been wanting to play around with Rust for real-time programming for a while. Given that your workload is parallel I would imagine CPU pinning is pretty important for making your deadlines. Since my current job involves maintaining a bunch of natively bridged code to add real-time scheduling to a non-realtime environment (Java) I don't wanna muck around with it until the language itself adds the stuff needed to the native API. I've been watching this RFC[1] for years waiting for some notion of progress of support for this in the language itself. Doesn't seem to be a lot of focus on it right now. [1]: https://github.com/rust-lang/rfcs/issues/819 https://github.com/rust-lang/rfcs/issues/819
- rapsey 9y ago
  This crate provides the functionality: https://github.com/Elzair/core_affinity_rs https://github.com/Elzair/core_affinity_rs It takes a couple of seconds to add this crate to your project. I don't see what the problem is?
  - dljsjr 9y ago
    Well for one, that crate's first commit is from September from this year so it's quite new and I didn't know about it. That's the sort of information I was looking for with my question. Secondly, though, while it handles affinity it still doesn't handle priority.
    - pornel 9y ago
      If you know how to do that in C, you can call the same functions from Rust (you'll find them in libc crate or you'll need `bindgen` to convert a C header to Rust). The Rust ecosystem is still young, but on the upside maintainers are active and keen to expand their crates, so there's a high chance they'll add the feature you need if you just ask.
      - dljsjr 9y ago
        From my understanding (and also mentioned by someone in the comments on the RFC I linked), while you can do things to the threads by just directly calling through to C, what you end up with is a thread that doesn't have all of the Rust runtime niceties set up on it correctly. I'm just waiting for a full featured version of this functionality to be available in the language, but I was also sort of curious to see what OP's solution to the problem was. And like I mentioned originally, my day job is to maintain code that does the same thing but for Java. I don't wanna have to maintain it in two languages even if one is just a pet project. Since Rust is billing itself as a systems language it makes sense that this will be a feature eventually, and I'm willing to wait patiently. It's not holding me back from anything, it's just a personal curiosity.
        steveklabnik 9y ago
        Rust doesn’t really have much of a runtime; I’m not sure what niceties you’re thinkjg of :) (I also logged that you talked about this in the issue; even knowing people want this is useful; it’s probably not in std because nobody’s ever really argued they need it!)
nkg 9y ago
Is there a state-of-the-art library for audio analysis ? (genuinely asking)
- dharma1 9y ago
  what type of audio analysis? There's this - http://essentia.upf.edu/documentation/ http://essentia.upf.edu/documentation/
  - nkg 9y ago
    I am thinking about spectrum comparison, like shazam does
    - dharma1 9y ago
      Essentia does audio fingerprinting with Chromaprint, which is essentially that. There are also other open source projects using Chromaprint focused specifically on that - https://github.com/worldveil/dejavu https://github.com/worldveil/dejavu
jsd1982 9y ago
Strange that you dismiss Java due to its JVM dependency, yet pause at C# disregarding its CLR dependency. C# does not strictly require you to write your code with OOP principles in mind. Yes there are classes, properties, inheritance, etc. but you can treat those as purely organizational and write in a more functional style. Regardless, Rust seems like a solid choice here, but I wouldn't discount Go (golang). It's incredibly simple to write and read code in and its runtime is incredibly rock solid. I have web services written in Go that have literally never crashed of their own accord.
- tetromino_ 9y ago
  The author mentions needing to package python for distributing the product, which suggests that the product is intended for Windows. Which means that clr (unlike python and jvm) is probably preinstalled on most of his customers' machines.

72 points by blacksmythe 9y ago

mediocreguy 9y ago

Just curious, why was GO not looked at as an option?

alexnewman 9y ago
mediocreguy why go and not python or tcl?
- alexnewman 9y ago
  "The main problem with the Python version of this product - or subproduct - was that it was pretty unstable, hard to extend and hard to debug" -> I assume go would be worse. This is where rust's hefty language comes in handy

dljsjr 9y ago

How do you handle real-time thread priorities and CPU affinity? I work in soft real-time software as well (feedback control for humanoid robots) and I've been wanting to play around with Rust for real-time programming for a while. Given that your workload is parallel I would imagine CPU pinning is pretty important for making your deadlines. Since my current job involves maintaining a bunch of natively bridged code to add real-time scheduling to a non-realtime environment (Java) I don't wanna muck around with it until the language itself adds the stuff needed to the native API. I've been watching this RFC[1] for years waiting for some notion of progress of support for this in the language itself. Doesn't seem to be a lot of focus on it right now. [1]: https://github.com/rust-lang/rfcs/issues/819 https://github.com/rust-lang/rfcs/issues/819

rapsey 9y ago
This crate provides the functionality: https://github.com/Elzair/core_affinity_rs https://github.com/Elzair/core_affinity_rs It takes a couple of seconds to add this crate to your project. I don't see what the problem is?
- dljsjr 9y ago
  Well for one, that crate's first commit is from September from this year so it's quite new and I didn't know about it. That's the sort of information I was looking for with my question. Secondly, though, while it handles affinity it still doesn't handle priority.
  - pornel 9y ago
    If you know how to do that in C, you can call the same functions from Rust (you'll find them in libc crate or you'll need `bindgen` to convert a C header to Rust). The Rust ecosystem is still young, but on the upside maintainers are active and keen to expand their crates, so there's a high chance they'll add the feature you need if you just ask.
    - dljsjr 9y ago
      From my understanding (and also mentioned by someone in the comments on the RFC I linked), while you can do things to the threads by just directly calling through to C, what you end up with is a thread that doesn't have all of the Rust runtime niceties set up on it correctly. I'm just waiting for a full featured version of this functionality to be available in the language, but I was also sort of curious to see what OP's solution to the problem was. And like I mentioned originally, my day job is to maintain code that does the same thing but for Java. I don't wanna have to maintain it in two languages even if one is just a pet project. Since Rust is billing itself as a systems language it makes sense that this will be a feature eventually, and I'm willing to wait patiently. It's not holding me back from anything, it's just a personal curiosity.
      - steveklabnik 9y ago
        Rust doesn’t really have much of a runtime; I’m not sure what niceties you’re thinkjg of :) (I also logged that you talked about this in the issue; even knowing people want this is useful; it’s probably not in std because nobody’s ever really argued they need it!)

nkg 9y ago

Is there a state-of-the-art library for audio analysis ? (genuinely asking)

dharma1 9y ago
what type of audio analysis? There's this - http://essentia.upf.edu/documentation/ http://essentia.upf.edu/documentation/
- nkg 9y ago
  I am thinking about spectrum comparison, like shazam does
  - dharma1 9y ago
    Essentia does audio fingerprinting with Chromaprint, which is essentially that. There are also other open source projects using Chromaprint focused specifically on that - https://github.com/worldveil/dejavu https://github.com/worldveil/dejavu

jsd1982 9y ago

Strange that you dismiss Java due to its JVM dependency, yet pause at C# disregarding its CLR dependency. C# does not strictly require you to write your code with OOP principles in mind. Yes there are classes, properties, inheritance, etc. but you can treat those as purely organizational and write in a more functional style. Regardless, Rust seems like a solid choice here, but I wouldn't discount Go (golang). It's incredibly simple to write and read code in and its runtime is incredibly rock solid. I have web services written in Go that have literally never crashed of their own accord.

tetromino_ 9y ago
The author mentions needing to package python for distributing the product, which suggests that the product is intended for Windows. Which means that clr (unlike python and jvm) is probably preinstalled on most of his customers' machines.