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Yah these are all well understood, however, you don't get to nuclear reactors without inventing some new math supporting subatomic physics. Saying that audio h

Yah these are all well understood, however, you don't get to nuclear reactors without inventing some new math supporting subatomic physics. Saying that audio has "different set of constraints from other types of workloads" and giving up on fundamental algorithm research is just defeatist, throwing in the towel, and frankly really insulting to human advancement. Come on, we need some new algorithms and just saying "whelp it can't be done" is kind of ... not the hacker spirit. It could be that we need quantum algorithms for parallel processing what previously was thought to be serial. Just from reading your well reasoned paragraph, I can see we desperately need fundamental algorithm research in sound processing. An imaginary scenario might to to invent an algorithm to convert/transform sound/pressure wave information into another domain, one that is not dependent on serial time, and then do the operations, and then re-convert it back to the time domain that we usually associate with sound processing. Where, within this alternative domain, parallel processing is possible. We do stuff like this all the time in other disciplines. Even stuff like the FFT was an attempt to transform and make certain "unsolvable" problem solvable in another form. That's the kind of math research that I'm referring to.

PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
Parallel processing isn't "interesting" except as a way to do things more quickly. But for 90% or more of the things people do in DAWs (and currently want to do in DAWs), current processors can already do it fast enough. So the sort of innovation your dreaming of/imagining isn't going to come from new algorithms - it's going to come from people wanting to do new things. This is already happening to some extent with things like timbral transfer, but even there, the most important part of it is well within current processing capabilities. > Come on, we need some new algorithms If you don't have a "why", that doesn't make much sense. Start with "Come on, we need to be able to do <this>" and then (maybe) the algorithms will follow. Necessity is the mother of invention, but so is desire. What do you desire?
- barkingcat 3y ago
  The desire would be to work with sound artists and acoustic designers and product designers and engineers to make certain types of audio spaces. A lot of the cutting edge of acoustic research is from people wanting to make materials and spaces do certain things with sound. For example, this article describes a system that lets sound through one way This was described in https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-one-way-street-for-sound/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-one-way-street-... ("an acoustic circulator") - the need will come from things like this. And for musicians, artists, and instrument makers to make use of materials, devices, and spaces like this. That would be my answer to your question of where the need/why will come from. Imagine needing to write a DAW module to deal with "one way sound" that results from using an acoustic circulator in a musical production or a song.
PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
> An imaginary scenario might to to invent an algorithm to convert/transform sound/pressure wave information into another domain, one that is not dependent on serial time, and then do the operations, and then re-convert it back to the time domain that we usually associate with sound processing. Where, within this alternative domain, parallel processing is possible. We already do this. It's called FFT, which transforms the data from the time domain to the frequency domain. You can, if you want/need to, parallelize frequency domain processing. There's oodles of interesting audio software that does this. But again, parallel processing is only interesting for speed. And we mostly have plenty of speed these days.

PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago

Parallel processing isn't "interesting" except as a way to do things more quickly. But for 90% or more of the things people do in DAWs (and currently want to do in DAWs), current processors can already do it fast enough. So the sort of innovation your dreaming of/imagining isn't going to come from new algorithms - it's going to come from people wanting to do new things. This is already happening to some extent with things like timbral transfer, but even there, the most important part of it is well within current processing capabilities. > Come on, we need some new algorithms If you don't have a "why", that doesn't make much sense. Start with "Come on, we need to be able to do <this>" and then (maybe) the algorithms will follow. Necessity is the mother of invention, but so is desire. What do you desire?

barkingcat 3y ago
The desire would be to work with sound artists and acoustic designers and product designers and engineers to make certain types of audio spaces. A lot of the cutting edge of acoustic research is from people wanting to make materials and spaces do certain things with sound. For example, this article describes a system that lets sound through one way This was described in https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-one-way-street-for-sound/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-one-way-street-... ("an acoustic circulator") - the need will come from things like this. And for musicians, artists, and instrument makers to make use of materials, devices, and spaces like this. That would be my answer to your question of where the need/why will come from. Imagine needing to write a DAW module to deal with "one way sound" that results from using an acoustic circulator in a musical production or a song.

PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago

> An imaginary scenario might to to invent an algorithm to convert/transform sound/pressure wave information into another domain, one that is not dependent on serial time, and then do the operations, and then re-convert it back to the time domain that we usually associate with sound processing. Where, within this alternative domain, parallel processing is possible. We already do this. It's called FFT, which transforms the data from the time domain to the frequency domain. You can, if you want/need to, parallelize frequency domain processing. There's oodles of interesting audio software that does this. But again, parallel processing is only interesting for speed. And we mostly have plenty of speed these days.