I am aware of two cross-platform audio libraries that cover OS X, Windows and Linux: RTAudio and PortAudio
I'm aware of a couple that support OS X and iOS: Novocaine and TAAE
However, I can't find anything that supports OS X, Windows and Linux and also iOS, Android
Does such a technology exist?
Un4seen's BASS audio library claims to do what you want. I've only used it on Windows, but there is a lot of chatter about it for Android an iOS, as well as the desktop platforms.
http://www.un4seen.com/
It's free for non-commercial use, otherwise the licensing is pretty decently priced in my opinion.
(https://www.juce.com/)(JUCE) was my choice in the end.
It is a C++ platform with a focus on real-time audio. I don't know how I missed it in the original question.
JUCE has gone from strength to strength over the past few years. Recently they have reorganised the licensing model so as to encourage independent/indie developers.
Don't want to sound too much like an advert, but I'm very happy with this technology stack.
Related
I made a little heart rate monitor app with Unity, but trying to ship it to Windows, the bluetooth part isn't cross platform.
Are there existing cross platform (mac/windows, linux too would be nice but not a dealbreaker) bluetooth solutions?
Unfortunately there isn't a "pure" cross-platform solution where you can write one application that works across multiple platforms. This is because the underlying stack for different OSes/platforms is different because the hardware is different for them. The closest thing to a cross-platform solution might be Xamarin as theoretically you can write an application that works for Android/iOS/Windows. Have a look at the links below:-
Developing Cross-platform BLE Apps
ble.net: cross platform BLE library
BLE on Xamarin Cross-platform
The smart BLE Guide: Add BLE to your app with Qt and Flego
So far, I've used many different Audio Production software on Mac and Windows platforms. Often times, I ponder on the idea of creating my own DAW, but I realize that would be an extremely difficult challenge for a single person to undertake (especially if only knowledgeable in one particular area / language of programming).
There's a flood of ideas / features that comes to my mind just by the thought of some of the other DAWs I've used. From implementing MIDI in/out, Audio Routing, Mix Buses, VST support, User Interface for a Piano Roll and Song view, etc...
So my question is...
Which roles would be required in a team of developers to create a complete Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) Software?
I think the right answer is several good developers (you don't need so many, perhaps 3) a good product manager, an ui designer/graphist a lot of testers. And a good coffee machine.
The real problem is what kind of DAW do you want, portable on mac and windows, which OSs, which formats (vst 2, 3, AU, RTAS, AAX, rack extension, DX), do you want only MIDI and adio tracks, which external MIDI devices you want to support, do you support OSC, other protocols?
What will be the features of you mixer, integrated effects? What support of audio API on windows (wasapi, asio ...) do you want some cloud feature ? community or online store integration?
What kind of breakthrough would you have compared to cubase, live, PT, DP, Logic, garage band, bitwig, studio one, sonar, fl studio ...? Do you want modular patches or just tracks? Will you have advanced integrated controls or midi modifiers?
All that is the problem...
This is a very complex question!
I'm considering developing an app for the upcoming Windows 8. The app requires low-latency audio recording and playback, and I'm trying find out whether the OS will support that (as opposed to other platforms).
So what I'd like to know is:
Is there a low-latency audio API in Windows 8?
Will it be supported on platforms other than PC (e.g. tablets)?
Thanks!
WASAPI was introduced with Windows Vista as the low-latency audio API. It is available both to desktop and to Metro style applications on Windows 8. Because it is a very low-level API, using it is not simple, but it gives you the most power. It will work on both Windows 8 and the newly-minted Windows RT (Arm).
Also available is XAudio2 which is a slightly higher-level API which will be easier to work with. It is the replacement for DirectSound and is designed for game developers, but may work for your purposes. This also is available to both Windows 8 and Windows RT.
There is a bit of comparison of the two APIs at the bottom of this article. I would start with XAudio2 and move to WASAPI only if you find XAudio2 doesn't meet your needs.
I would consider using XAudio2. Microsoft providers Basic audio playback sample for easy start
Yes, there is a low latency API you can access. It's called WASAPI
From my understanding, all tablets/Laptops/Desktops/anything running Windows 8, will have access to it. The only downside is that it's harder to work with (because it's lower level), but you get to directly interact with the byte arrays getting send to the speaker, and the latency is very low.
I wonder; does audio software like Cubase and Audacity use PlaySound calls??
Where can I learn about low level audio programming? As far as I've found information on the web, MCI seems to be the lowest level audio API in Windows...
Thanks
Edit: I don't ask for information specific for Windows only.
There's several audio APIs to choose from. The oldest and most widely supported is the waveOut API - look for functions starting with waveOut in MSDN. A slightly newer one is DirectSound which is geared more towards games, but it's main feature over waveOut is positional 3D sound which professional audio software doesn't use (it was also supposed to have lower latency than waveOut, but that never really materialized). For low latency audio, there is ASIO. Professional audio apps support this API, but not all drivers do (it's a standard feature in professional sound cards, but not gaming or on-board hardware). ASIO can provide much lower latency than waveOut or DirectSound. Finally, there's the kernel streaming interface, which is the lowest-level audio interface still accessible from user-mode code. This is a direct pipe into Windows's internal mixer which combines output from all apps that are currently playing sound into the signal that gets sent to the sound card. It's scarcely documented though. There's a driver called ASIO4ALL (just google it) that provides ASIO support on soundcards without ASIO drivers by implementing the ASIO API on top of the kernel streaming interface.
I'm a little late to the game here, but I posted a Windows API history last week that might add a little more context. The choice of API really depends on your needs. If you want to avoid 3rd party libraries, it really only comes down to MME, XAudio2, and Core Audio (WASAPI).
A Brief History of Windows Audio APIs
Hope this helps!
Actually, if you are looking for more than Windows-only output support, then the best way to start is to review Phil Burk's PortAudio, available as of this writing at http://www.portaudio.com/ .
ASIO is a good quality interface, but it's proprietary and owned by Steinberg.
There are many lower-level interfaces to audio output than MCI in modern Windows. These include, at least, DirectSound, XAudio and WASAPI.
I recommend avoiding the Windows APIs as much as possible, and learning PortAudio instead.
I'm writing a cross-platform program that involves scrolling a waveform along with uncompressed wav/aiff audio playback. Low latency and accuracy are pretty important. What is the best cross-platform audio library for audio playback when synchronizing to an external clock? By that I mean that I would like to be able to write the playback code so it sends events to a listener many times per second that includes the "hearing frame" at the moment of the notification.
That's all I need to do. No recording, no mixing, no 3d audio, nothing. Just playback with the best possible hearing frame notifications available.
Right now I am considering RTAudio and PortAudio, mostly the former since it uses ALSA.
The target platforms, in order of importance, are Mac OSX 10.5/6, Ubuntu 10.11, Windows XP/7.
C/C++ are both fine.
Thanks for your help!
The best performing cross platform library for this is jack. Properly configured, jack on Linux can outperform Windows asio easily (in terms of low latency processing without dropouts). But you cannot expect normal users to use jack (the demon should be started by the user before the app is started, and it can be a bit tricky to set up). If you are making an app specifically for pro-audio I would highly recommend looking in to jack.
Edit:
Portaudio is not as high-performance, but is much simpler for the user (no special configuration should be needed on their end, unlike jack). Most open source cross platform audio programs that I have used use portaudio (much moreso than openal), but unlike jack I have not used it personally. It is callback based, and looks pretty straightforward though.
OpenAL maybe an option for you.