Re: Node Parameter Control using Curves

Hi Al, you brought up a couple of questions about curves which I don't think
anyone has addressed yet.

On Mon, Oct 4, 2010 at 10:59 AM, Alistair MacDonald <al@bocoup.com> wrote:

> Good afternoon group,
>
> One thing we discussed in the Telecon today was the automation/control of
> Audio Node parameters from JavaScript using curves, where the processing is
> being performed by the compiled C code.
>
> It seems like this is something not yet covered in the WebKit Audio API and
> Joe Berkovitz brought up some interesting points from his experience working
> on the StandingWave audio engine for Flash.
>
> I just wanted to bring the subject up in the mailing list and perhaps spark
> some discussion on what form this feature might take in an API.
>
> Eg:
>
> What syntax could be used to define and apply curves from JavaScript?
>
> What kinds of curves are needed? (Parametric, linear, quad, etc)
>

I previously talked about curves in a general way without addressing the
exact way of how the time/values are specified.  I'm pretty sure we would
want at least the ability to specify simple linear (breakpoint) curves as
well as sample-accurate curves (for grain windows, and high-resolution
amplitude shaping).  But maybe we would also want quad.  One thought that
comes to mind is that we might be able to choose to only support linear and
sample-accurate in the API, but a custom graphical UI could still present
quad curve editing.  These graphical curves could then be converted to
linear or sample-accurate in JS with no loss of generality.



> Can the user supply their own curve algorithm in the same way users can add
> easing modes to graphics animations?
>

If we support sample-accurate curves then JS can generate arbitrarily
complex shapes.


Can curves values/types be changed real-time etc?
>

I think this should be possible.  Of course you would only hear the part of
the curve that is playing "now", so if you edit a portion of the curve which
is in the past (has already) played then you wouldn't hear any difference.


Can curves be quantized to a BPM clock?
>

I think it should be possible to implement some BPM-based looped-curves
(LFOs).


>
> Can curves drive frequency parameters for synthesis?
>

I hope so :)  I'm imagining that these curves could be attached to any
AudioParam, including "cutoff frequency".

Cheers,
Chris