Re: fftSize requirement for RealtimeAnalyserNode

On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 11:27 PM, Raymond Toy <rtoy@google.com> wrote:

>
> On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 4:07 AM, Jussi Kalliokoski <
> jussi.kalliokoski@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I hadn't actually even noticed this. Interesting. Why exactly should the
>> value be a power of two? It seems to me like the spec shouldn't say
>> something like this. Sure, power of two FFTs are easier to implement than
>> others, but IIRC they are rarely the fastest. And if we aim for
>> performance, the implementation should probably be using something like
>> FFTW that allows for any buffer size anyway.
>>
>>
> My recollection is that the power of two FFT is faster (possibly using
> radix-4 and radix-8 implementations internally).
>

Yeah, you want small prime factors. but it is only relevant for very large
FFT:s, but it is O(n log n) in all cases so it still scales pretty well for
large sizes.


> Do you have a specific need for a non-power of two analysis?  I'm just
> curious.
>

It just seems like an arbitrary limit. Most of the time, you probably want
to set the length in seconds, not samples, and then you won't get a
power-of-two.


> Also, FFTW uses the GPL license, so if the browser is also not GPL, there
> are potential legal issues.  This is where you go ask a lawyer.
>

There are other ones as well (kissfft is BSD 3-clause for example, IIRC),
but I don't think the licensing of certain FFT implementations is a valid
argument to base the spec on.

Also, the algorithm isn't complex, you could implement it without a library.

Jussi