Re: Specificity in the Web Audio API spec

On Fri, Mar 30, 2012 at 6:37 AM, Jussi Kalliokoski <
jussi.kalliokoski@gmail.com> wrote:

> > I think you raise some interesting points.  What is the goal here?  Are
> you expecting that independent implementations will always produce
> *exactly* the same output for the same input?
>
> Yes, that would be quite ideal. Otherwise if you need that precision (a
> DAW hardly can afford to sound different on differnet platforms, especially
> on such a crucial element as a delay node), you're going to have to exclude
> browsers or resort to a JavaScript implementation for a tool that's
> supposed to be predefined. Kind of beats the purpose of having predefined
> nodes, I think. And having these algorithms well defined in the spec is
> something to push browser vendors to fix their implementations instead of
> marking them as WontFix because it follows the spec that isn't defined well
> enough.


I definitely agree that having all browsers produce the same output would
be ideal.  But that requires a *huge* effort  to make the spec precise
enough.  Even a difference between using floats or doubles in the
algorithms can make a difference in the results.   Alternatively, you could
say that the current webkit implementation is the reference.  But that has
it's own problems because once the spec is blessed, so is the
implementation so that it can't be changed for ever after.

We'll probably have to choose some middle ground where, perhaps, the
algorithms are specified, but the implementation details are left to the
browser.  That's still a huge effort.

But I definitely agree the spec should be as precise as reasonably possible.

Ray