Re: JavaScriptNode Tone Generation

Hi Chris,

Glad you found the example useful. I tried to make it as terse and
simple as possible, so I glossed over a few points.

For the call

    context.createJavaScriptNode(1024, 1, 1);

I think the second argument should be 0, as there are no inputs. For
the third argument, I'm not sure I understand you exactly. The intent
here was to have a single output buffer and use only the first channel
of that buffer. Have I got this right? The example differs from the
spec, because it looks like in the current implementation the
outputBuffer attribute of the event is just a buffer, rather than an
array of numberOfOutputs buffers. Regardless, I think the example
would be more clear if it filled both channels.

Finally, yes, it should definitely use the sampleRate.

- Ryan

On Wed, May 4, 2011 at 3:33 PM, Chris Rogers <crogers@google.com> wrote:
> Hi Al,
> I just stumbled upon an example by Ryan Berdeen doing almost exactly the
> same thing as you here:
> http://things.ryanberdeen.com/post/3971100191/web-audio-api-generating-sound
> I really like this example for its simplicity:
> **************************************
> window.AudioContext = window.webkitAudioContext;
> var context = new AudioContext();
> var node = context.createJavaScriptNode(1024, 1, 1);
> var p = 0;
> node.onaudioprocess = function (e) {
>     var data = e.outputBuffer.getChannelData(0);
>     for (var i = 0; i < data.length; i++) {
>         data[i] = Math.sin(p++);
>     }
> };
> function play() {
>     node.connect(context.destination);
> }
> function pause() {
>     node.disconnect();
> }
> **************************************
> So, even with the current implementation, it's possible to skip the awkward
> step of connection a "dummy" source.  And, I think this code is starting to
> look almost ideal and really very simple.
> It's not completely perfect yet:
> * The method call:  context.createJavaScriptNode(1024, 1, 1);
>   The second argument is currently supposed to be the number of inputs
> (which can be ignored as in the above example).
>   The third argument is currently supposed to be the number of outputs, and
> *not* the number of channels for a single output.  This distinction between
> number of outputs and number of channels is subtle, but important and
> something I need to explain better.  I also need to implement it more
> properly.  One option here is simply to only allow a single input (which can
> be ignored) and single output.  Then these method arguments *can* be taken
> to mean the number of channels.  I think for nearly all cases this will be
> sufficient, but doesn't completely exploit the possibilities of rendering
> distinct multiple outputs that AudioNodes are capable of...
> * I would recommend that people generating sin waves, or any other DSP, make
> use of the AudioContext .sampleRate attribute, since the sample-rate may be
> different depending on the machine or implementation.  And when generating
> an audio stream sample-by-sample, it's important to factor in this
> sample-rate.
> Chris
>
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, Apr 21, 2011 at 3:31 PM, Alistair Macdonald <al@bocoup.com> wrote:
>>
>> Hi Chris Rogers,
>> Digging a little deeper into the Web Audio spec here to build a few tests.
>> Enjoying the API so far, it feels nice to work with. It also seems pretty
>> glitch free (only tried OSX).
>> I have two questions:
>> 1) Can I download a Linux version from anywhere yet to test? (even if it
>> is not release-ready)
>> 2) Is there a better way generate simple tones from JavaScript than the
>> following method?
>>   var context = new webkitAudioContext(),
>>     ptr = 0,
>>     jsProc = context.createJavaScriptNode( 2048 );
>>   jsProc.onaudioprocess = function( e ){
>> var outl = event.outputBuffer.getChannelData(0),
>>   outr = event.outputBuffer.getChannelData(1),
>>   n = e.inputBuffer.getChannelData(0).length;
>> for (var i = 0; i < n; ++i) {
>>           outl[i] = Math.sin((i+ptr)/40);
>>           outr[i] = Math.sin((i+ptr)/40);
>>         }
>>
>>     ptr+=i;
>>   };
>>   var source = context.createBufferSource();
>>   source.connect( jsProc );
>>   jsProc.connect( context.destination );
>>
>> This seems to work, but I am unsure whether this is the ideal method for
>> generating a simple tone with JavaScript? I'm asking because it feels a
>> little odd to be using an event from a silent stream to generate the data.
>> Perhaps I should be thinking of this event as the point in time where the
>> audio engine calls for the mixing down all buffers connected to the
>> context.destination, rather than thinking of it as new data being available
>> to the stream?
>>
>> -- Alistair
>

Received on Friday, 13 May 2011 04:48:50 UTC