Re: Web Audio API questions and comments

Hey Chris,
Thanks for the reply,

On Tue, Jun 19, 2012 at 5:34 PM, Chris Wilson <cwilso@google.com> wrote:
> Hey Joe - I can respond to a couple of these.
>
> On Tue, Jun 19, 2012 at 7:39 AM, Joe Turner <joe@oampo.co.uk> wrote:
>>
>> - Operator nodes, AudioParam nodes
>>
>> Can we have separate nodes for the basic mathematical operators (add,
>> subtract, divide, multiply and modulo), and a way of having the output
>> of an AudioParam as a signal?  This would allow all the flexibility
>> needed for scaling, offsetting and combining signals in order to
>> control parameters.  I know a bit of trickery can make stuff like this
>> possible at the moment, and it's trivial to implement in JavaScript,
>> but it seems like core functionality to me.
>
>
> Actually, you should be able to do all of these operations by either
> connecting nodes together (add and subtract - might need a waveshaper to
> flip phase for subtract), using gainNodes (multiply and divide) - not sure
> about how you'd use modulo.
>

Yeah - it just seems a little ugly having to use waveshapers for
subtraction, and a scaled non-oscillating oscillator to add a dc
offset to a signal.  Operator nodes and some way of outputting
parameters seems like a cleaner way to do this to me.

>>
>> - Tapping DelayNodes
>>
>> At the moment it's only possible to tap a delay line at the beginning,
>> and the read position cannot be modulated.  This makes it pretty much
>> impossible to implement effects such as pitch shifting, chorus,
>> phasing, flanging and modulated reverbs, all of which rely on either
>> multiple taps or modulated taps.  It would be nice to have something
>> similar to Supercollider's BufRd [4] and BufWr [5] with DelayNode
>> built as a layer on top of this.  Also AudioBufferSourceNode could be
>> a layer on top of a BufRd equivalent.
>
>
> Not sure what you mean - you should be able to build all these.  Remember
> you can chain multiple delay nodes in series as well as in parallel.  For
> chorus and flanging, I'm currently working on a code sample.
>

I think this must be one of the many clever DSP tricks which I don't
know about.  I've always done this sort of thing with a single delay
line and taps modulating in the middle of it.  An example would be
brilliant.

>> - AudioBufferSourceNode playbackState change event
>>
>> Would it be useful to have an event fired when the
>> AudioBufferSourceNode's state changes?  I can't think of anything off
>> the top of my head, but it seems like it could be useful for some
>> applications maybe?
>
>
> Actually, it would be interesting to do that; I've wanted to do cleanup
> (e.g., change a play button's visual state back when the BSN finishes
> playing), and I've currently hacked it by setTimout(buffer.duration*1000).
>  That won't work when playbackRate is being manipulated, though.
>
>>
>> - AudioPannerNode
>>
>> Having never done any work in 3D sound I find this all a bit
>> intimidating.  Is there any chance of something simpler built on top
>> of this for those of us who want sound to come out of the left
>> speaker, the right speaker, or some combination of the two?
>
>
> I'll come up with a sample.  It's actually quite easy to do simple panning.

Thanks, that would be helpful.  This sort of thing maybe lives in
JavaScript anyway.

>
>>
>> - RealTimeAnalyserNode
>>
>> This seems strange to me - the functionality could be really useful,
>> but it seems focused very narrowly on creating visualisations.  I
>> think a nicer solution would be to have separate FFT and IFFT nodes so
>> frequency domain effects could be integrated into the processing
>> chain, and then a separate node which allows access to the FFT or
>> waveform data depending on where in the graph it is inserted.  So for
>> visualisations you would have an AudioNode connected to an FFTNode,
>> connected to a BufferYoinkerNode.
>
>
> This is actually about what realtimeAnalyser is.  What scenario are you
> trying to do, exactly?
>

Yes, I was more interested in what this would allow on the audio side
apart from data visualisation.  For example:

AudioNode -> FFTNode -> InterestingFrequencyDomainEffectNode ->
IFFTNode -> AudioDestinationNode

>>
>> - DynamicsCompressorNode sidechaining and lookahead
>>
>> I'm not sure if these are a bit specialised, a bit of a dark art, or
>> both, but they are both common and fairly well defined features of
>> compressors which may be useful.  I could see sidechaining being
>> especially useful for ducking in broadcast applications.
>
>
> Lookahead is different, of course.  Sidechaining could be accomplished by
> connecting the 'reduction'  parameter of the DynamicsCompressor to a gain
> node - although since reduction is an AudioParam, it can't get connected
> anywhere.  That could be fixed by adding an AudioNode copy of reduction, I
> suppose.
>

The specification it says that the reduction parameter is read-only
for metering purposes.  Is this correct?

Cheers,
Joe

Received on Tuesday, 19 June 2012 17:02:34 UTC