RE: Standardizing audio "level 1" features first?

Hello everyone,

my name is Michael Schoeffler and I'm a Ph.D. student at the AudioLabs Erlangen. I'm currently working on a framework for signal processing plugins. The idea is to have something similar to VST or Audio Units, but fully web-based. The chances are not bad, that some of my co-workers will also use this framework for developing their plugins. So maybe I'll be able to provide a lot of feedback to this group in the near future :)

On topic:
When I started developing with the Web Audio Data, my first thought was "Great API, but it seems to be too high level" and my opinion hasn't changed yet. For example the multichannel systems handling is for my use-cases too high-level. As I understand the API focuses on the "mainstream" systems like Mono, Stereo and 5.1 and does an automatically up/downmixing on the connection between two AudioNodes. In the source code of Google Chrome I found many terms related to this three "mainstream" system. But I think other systems getting more important. A lot of research is done in rendering 22.2 to 5.1, 7.1 to stereo, 5.1 to stereo and so on. So even huge multichannel systems could be relevant for mobile devices some time.
Another example would be spatialization. It is directly integrated in the API. There are tons of approaches how convolution could be implemented: In time-domain, frequency-domain, uniformly, non-uniformly, combined with psychoacoustics hints,.... Each approach has its advantages and disadvantages. For myself, I would not use the API function. I would build a library that offers all the approaches. Performance is maybe a problem, but I would rely e.g. on the WebCL WG, so that the performance argument doesn't count anymore.

Nonetheless the Web Audio API is already very useable for me. So thanks to the guys that worked hard on it so far.

The idea of a "Level 1" specification sounds for me very interesting.

Best Regards,

Michael




--
Michael Schoeffler, M.Sc.

International Audio Laboratories Erlangen (AudioLabs)
University of Erlangen-Nuremberg & Fraunhofer IIS, Audio & Multimedia
Am Wolfsmantel 33
91058 Erlangen
Germany

Tel.: +49 9131 85-20515
Skype: michael.schoeffler
michael.schoeffler@audiolabs-erlangen.de
http://www.audiolabs-erlangen.de/

Received on Saturday, 11 February 2012 15:43:34 UTC