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Rust Audio Development Forum

thibaut_barrere 5y ago
I find that the Rust ecosystem is shaping nicely for audio-related stuff, and found this forum, so sharing it here.
- dimal 5y ago
  I had been thinking of getting into audio processing (to create a custom Eurorack module) and thought Rust would be nice, but everywhere I looked, people recommended C/C++ -- I think since there are so many existing libraries to pull from. But I am not a fan of C/C++, to put it lightly. Can I ask, what has improved about the Rust ecosystem that you think makes it viable?
gavinray 5y ago
Just as a heads up, the Discord server for this group is much more active than their forum FWIW. Lovely group of people. https://github.com/RustAudio https://github.com/RustAudio https://discord.gg/b3hjnGw https://discord.gg/b3hjnGw
- mxmilkiib 5y ago
  For those not a fan of proprietary chat systems, there's a few Rust leaning folk hanging out in #lad #jack #lv2 etc on libera.chat.
  - jcelerier 5y ago
    Can confirm, I once tried to setup a community on discord and got my account banned without any possibility for appeal and without ever having idea of what went wrong, never again
    - darthrupert 5y ago
      That FOSS projects choose Discord out of all the options shows a severe lack of judgment.
      - smoldesu 5y ago
        This doesn't seem to be for an OSS project? Just clicking around the forum, it seems to be about audio-related topics through the context of Rust, with no mention to software licensing or availability. Sure, I would have loved for this to be a Matrix server, but beggars can't be choosers. If the Rust audio devs are using Discord, that's where you have to go to find them.
        blendergeek 5y ago
        https://github.com/RustAudio https://github.com/RustAudio They list their official Dicourse/Discord chat there. I believe this is a set of Free Software projects of a sort.
      - nitrogen 5y ago
        I've been an advocate for and developer of Free software for a very long time. But the UX of everything Free is just horribly bad. I've written a toy softsynth for myself in Ruby and was looking for some MIDI editing software that I could use to quickly throw some notes in a piano roll and draw some curves for various CCs, and export to a .mid. But everything was incredibly cumbersome. Of the several I tried, only Ardour even allowed the control of arbitrary CCs, and I had to dig to find it, and it wanted to create an entire directory hierarchy before I could even draw a single note. If there was going to be a Free revolution of people donating and volunteering to overthrow the proprietary software world, it would have happened a long time ago. Free software has an insurmountable design, development, and discovery problem. If I were looking to start a community today, and actually have people join it, I'd go where the people are, and that is Discord.
        antihero 5y ago
        Yep, much as it has its drawbacks, Discord is where people jump in and get involved. Convenience wins.
- ericwood 5y ago
  The Rust Audio discord is fantastic, and the people there are extremely helpful. They gave me a lot of resources for getting started with DSP, and the authors of various libraries were able to lend a hand when things went south. There's some really exciting stuff happening in that world!
adamnemecek 5y ago
At some point, I'm planning on using webaudio as a starting point to implement a JUCE like framework with VST and AU support. The webaudio code is already in servo so doing this might not be too bad.
- gavinray 5y ago
  Out of curiosity, how would this work? You port WebAudio API to a compiled language or use a JS interpreter that has it? Would be interested to try this
  - adamnemecek 5y ago
    Not quite. There would be no JS. The WebAudio API is implemented in Rust. You would just use the innards (buffers, audio graph etc.) and leave it as a Rust framework. LabSound [0] has done something similar with C++ and WebKit. They took the WebAudio implementation and made it into a C++ framework. [0] https://github.com/LabSound/LabSound https://github.com/LabSound/LabSound
    - gavinray 5y ago
      > The WebAudio API is implemented in Rust Ah yup, for Servo that would make sense eh? Well neato. I hope you do, seems useful. Audio landscape needs more options besides JUCE and iPlug2.
  - cmrdsprklpny 5y ago
    Here's an in-development audio framework which uses JS. I haven't used it, but it looks interesting. https://www.elementary.audio/ https://www.elementary.audio/
jjice 5y ago
Any good resource for someone to learn how computer (is digital the right term>?) audio works? I have no clue what the raw/output/input formats are and how we compress that and such, but it's incredibly interesting and I'd love to learn.
- crs0 5y ago
  digital audio, yep -- in contrast with analog audio :) The TL;DR is that you make your computer spit out a certain amount of distinct values per second (like, say, 44100 floats per second, times two for stereo), and your DAC will convert that stream of numbers into an audio signal that your speakers will be able to use to produce sound. The way I like to mess around with ideas is to grab a library that writes to WAV files and see what I can make -- a Sine oscillator at a certain given frequency is a good place to start -- and then you can load that WAV file into Audacity (or your other favorite sound editor of choice) and analyze what you just made. More complex audio topics will require some DSP knowledge; I started teaching myself by reading http://www.dspguide.com/pdfbook.htm http://www.dspguide.com/pdfbook.htm, but there are a decent amount of other resources to learn from too. Especially ones that focus more on the audio aspects of DSP. There are some interesting programming challenges in the audio space; for example, if you want to pipe sound directly to your speakers (or in a plugin for a DAW), you're going to have to make your code real-time friendly. Designing an "audio graph" to hook devices up together (as if it was a modular system) can be a pretty interesting problem space when you're designing for real-time, polyphony, efficiency, etc. It's a fun topic if you're into both programming and music!
  - jjice 5y ago
    Thanks a lot, that was great overview!
    - gregsadetsky 5y ago
      And if you're interested in audio programming, follow this thread and the links/references therein :-) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27273706 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27273706

I find that the Rust ecosystem is shaping nicely for audio-related stuff, and found this forum, so sharing it here.

dimal 5y ago
I had been thinking of getting into audio processing (to create a custom Eurorack module) and thought Rust would be nice, but everywhere I looked, people recommended C/C++ -- I think since there are so many existing libraries to pull from. But I am not a fan of C/C++, to put it lightly. Can I ask, what has improved about the Rust ecosystem that you think makes it viable?

Just as a heads up, the Discord server for this group is much more active than their forum FWIW. Lovely group of people. https://github.com/RustAudio https://github.com/RustAudio https://discord.gg/b3hjnGw https://discord.gg/b3hjnGw

mxmilkiib 5y ago
For those not a fan of proprietary chat systems, there's a few Rust leaning folk hanging out in #lad #jack #lv2 etc on libera.chat.
- jcelerier 5y ago
  Can confirm, I once tried to setup a community on discord and got my account banned without any possibility for appeal and without ever having idea of what went wrong, never again
  - darthrupert 5y ago
    That FOSS projects choose Discord out of all the options shows a severe lack of judgment.
    - smoldesu 5y ago
      This doesn't seem to be for an OSS project? Just clicking around the forum, it seems to be about audio-related topics through the context of Rust, with no mention to software licensing or availability. Sure, I would have loved for this to be a Matrix server, but beggars can't be choosers. If the Rust audio devs are using Discord, that's where you have to go to find them.
      - blendergeek 5y ago
        https://github.com/RustAudio https://github.com/RustAudio They list their official Dicourse/Discord chat there. I believe this is a set of Free Software projects of a sort.
    - nitrogen 5y ago
      I've been an advocate for and developer of Free software for a very long time. But the UX of everything Free is just horribly bad. I've written a toy softsynth for myself in Ruby and was looking for some MIDI editing software that I could use to quickly throw some notes in a piano roll and draw some curves for various CCs, and export to a .mid. But everything was incredibly cumbersome. Of the several I tried, only Ardour even allowed the control of arbitrary CCs, and I had to dig to find it, and it wanted to create an entire directory hierarchy before I could even draw a single note. If there was going to be a Free revolution of people donating and volunteering to overthrow the proprietary software world, it would have happened a long time ago. Free software has an insurmountable design, development, and discovery problem. If I were looking to start a community today, and actually have people join it, I'd go where the people are, and that is Discord.
      - antihero 5y ago
        Yep, much as it has its drawbacks, Discord is where people jump in and get involved. Convenience wins.
ericwood 5y ago
The Rust Audio discord is fantastic, and the people there are extremely helpful. They gave me a lot of resources for getting started with DSP, and the authors of various libraries were able to lend a hand when things went south. There's some really exciting stuff happening in that world!

adamnemecek 5y ago

At some point, I'm planning on using webaudio as a starting point to implement a JUCE like framework with VST and AU support. The webaudio code is already in servo so doing this might not be too bad.

gavinray 5y ago
Out of curiosity, how would this work? You port WebAudio API to a compiled language or use a JS interpreter that has it? Would be interested to try this
- adamnemecek 5y ago
  Not quite. There would be no JS. The WebAudio API is implemented in Rust. You would just use the innards (buffers, audio graph etc.) and leave it as a Rust framework. LabSound [0] has done something similar with C++ and WebKit. They took the WebAudio implementation and made it into a C++ framework. [0] https://github.com/LabSound/LabSound https://github.com/LabSound/LabSound
  - gavinray 5y ago
    > The WebAudio API is implemented in Rust Ah yup, for Servo that would make sense eh? Well neato. I hope you do, seems useful. Audio landscape needs more options besides JUCE and iPlug2.
- cmrdsprklpny 5y ago
  Here's an in-development audio framework which uses JS. I haven't used it, but it looks interesting. https://www.elementary.audio/ https://www.elementary.audio/

jjice 5y ago

Any good resource for someone to learn how computer (is digital the right term>?) audio works? I have no clue what the raw/output/input formats are and how we compress that and such, but it's incredibly interesting and I'd love to learn.

crs0 5y ago
digital audio, yep -- in contrast with analog audio :) The TL;DR is that you make your computer spit out a certain amount of distinct values per second (like, say, 44100 floats per second, times two for stereo), and your DAC will convert that stream of numbers into an audio signal that your speakers will be able to use to produce sound. The way I like to mess around with ideas is to grab a library that writes to WAV files and see what I can make -- a Sine oscillator at a certain given frequency is a good place to start -- and then you can load that WAV file into Audacity (or your other favorite sound editor of choice) and analyze what you just made. More complex audio topics will require some DSP knowledge; I started teaching myself by reading http://www.dspguide.com/pdfbook.htm http://www.dspguide.com/pdfbook.htm, but there are a decent amount of other resources to learn from too. Especially ones that focus more on the audio aspects of DSP. There are some interesting programming challenges in the audio space; for example, if you want to pipe sound directly to your speakers (or in a plugin for a DAW), you're going to have to make your code real-time friendly. Designing an "audio graph" to hook devices up together (as if it was a modular system) can be a pretty interesting problem space when you're designing for real-time, polyphony, efficiency, etc. It's a fun topic if you're into both programming and music!
- jjice 5y ago
  Thanks a lot, that was great overview!
  - gregsadetsky 5y ago
    And if you're interested in audio programming, follow this thread and the links/references therein :-) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27273706 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27273706