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That's my takeaway from the keynote. I've done a bit of audio coding and couldn't believe that all the processing is done on the CPU. Afaik, existing audio lang

by emsy 8y ago

That's my takeaway from the keynote. I've done a bit of audio coding and couldn't believe that all the processing is done on the CPU. Afaik, existing audio languages don't care much about latency (as in trying to improve it) or don't aim to become a portable standard. The ones I tried (Collider and Faust) are also not supposed to be used to implement your audio code (for media apps/games), whereas SOUL aims to fulfil these roles as well.

jungler 8y ago
Audio apps have been the red-headed stepchildren of consumer operating systems since forever: the APIs aren't tuned towards latency, and they often stop providing functionality once "decode an MP3" works. And audio programming languages themselves have lingered in a research/prototyping/hobbyist zone for decades. CSound, one of the oldest examples, dates back to the 70's, but production hardware and software tends to ends up with funky embedded-code style toolchains because the higher level provisions aren't good enough for professional apps. That said I have seen a few games(indie scale projects) do something like run an instance of Pure Data rather than code up their own custom audio system. It's all a bit related to the difficulty of doing low-level, time-sensitive I/O in a computing world that has towers of abstraction. Graphics have been ushered up that abstraction path while audio is still living in the 90's, so you can see cool modern shader effects in your phone browser, but the same browser can't play Amiga tracker music without stuttering and popping. The attractive part of the SOUL pitch is in making the base tooling experience better, and then down the line using that to boost performance.
- jancsika 8y ago
  > That said I have seen a few games(indie scale projects) do something like run an instance of Pure Data rather than code up their own custom audio system. Spore used Pure Data to do algorithmic music. IIRC somebody there went through Fux's Gradus Ad Parnassum and reduced it to a set of branches to automatically generate common practice harmonic treatment of pseudo-randomly generated melodies. :) > but the same browser can't play Amiga tracker music without stuttering and popping. You're on a much tighter schedule for the Amiga audio emulator, and the failures are more glaring. A video stream that moshes for awhile is kind of beautiful as long as the audio remains pristine IMO. On the other hand, pristine video with stuttering audio starts a countdown for canceling the streaming service. But even given that, yes-- the webaudio interface has been quite lacking.

by emsy 8y ago

jungler 8y ago

Audio apps have been the red-headed stepchildren of consumer operating systems since forever: the APIs aren't tuned towards latency, and they often stop providing functionality once "decode an MP3" works. And audio programming languages themselves have lingered in a research/prototyping/hobbyist zone for decades. CSound, one of the oldest examples, dates back to the 70's, but production hardware and software tends to ends up with funky embedded-code style toolchains because the higher level provisions aren't good enough for professional apps. That said I have seen a few games(indie scale projects) do something like run an instance of Pure Data rather than code up their own custom audio system. It's all a bit related to the difficulty of doing low-level, time-sensitive I/O in a computing world that has towers of abstraction. Graphics have been ushered up that abstraction path while audio is still living in the 90's, so you can see cool modern shader effects in your phone browser, but the same browser can't play Amiga tracker music without stuttering and popping. The attractive part of the SOUL pitch is in making the base tooling experience better, and then down the line using that to boost performance.

jancsika 8y ago
> That said I have seen a few games(indie scale projects) do something like run an instance of Pure Data rather than code up their own custom audio system. Spore used Pure Data to do algorithmic music. IIRC somebody there went through Fux's Gradus Ad Parnassum and reduced it to a set of branches to automatically generate common practice harmonic treatment of pseudo-randomly generated melodies. :) > but the same browser can't play Amiga tracker music without stuttering and popping. You're on a much tighter schedule for the Amiga audio emulator, and the failures are more glaring. A video stream that moshes for awhile is kind of beautiful as long as the audio remains pristine IMO. On the other hand, pristine video with stuttering audio starts a countdown for canceling the streaming service. But even given that, yes-- the webaudio interface has been quite lacking.