[openbeos] Re: Haiku audio questions.

On 9/17/07, Kevin Ar18 <kevinar18@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> For better or worse, I am looking to put together a team to develop audio 
> applications for Haiku (free source, non-copyleft, if you care).

Awesome!  That's exciting to hear, some of my favorite BeOS
applications were audio apps and I'd love to see the trend continue.

> In the process, a number of questions have come up as to Haiku's status 
> regarding audio and it's performance.
>
> For example, how does the audio latency compare to some of the work that has 
> been done on Linux?  How does it compare to the BeOS?

Take a look at http://www.birdhouse.org/beos/bible/exc_audio.html,
particularly the chapter "Audio Applications" for some audio latency
numbers for BeOS vs. other systems.  I admit this info is a bit dated
(BeOS/Linux/Windows have all released new versions since), but it can
at least give you the sense of why the BeOS was called the "media OS".
 Unfortunately, it's the only set of hard numbers comparing the
various sound architectures (to my knowledge at least).

Haiku's goal is to approximate BeOS R5, but I doubt all the latency
numbers will be exactly alike.  It's too early to make a definitive
statement at this point, but I would be quite hesitant to believe that
Haiku would not be comparable, if not better, in performance than
other popular operating systems.


> Does Haiku have anything comparable to Jack, which connects all Jack enabled 
> devices with low latency?

I'm only slightly familiar with Jack and from what I remember about
it, a lot of the functionality of Jack is handled by the Media Kit
(and it's add-on architecture).  Some small applications were written
to help simplify using some of this functionality from an end-user's
POV; for example, the AudioSplitter media addon
(http://www.bebits.com/app/3005) allowed you to re-route one audio
source to multiple destinations.  The Media Kit's modular architecture
makes creating apps like this relatively easy, I would recommend
browsing through the available apps on BeBits for many more (simple
apps as well as full-fledged audio suites).

> What about libraries like libfft and libsndfile?
>

I wasn't able to find BeOS\Haiku versions of those exact libraries, so
if you're thinking of porting something that requires them you may be
out of luck.  However, if all you are looking for is the functionality
they offer, then I have better news :)  For fast Fourier transforms,
you may want to see http://www.bebits.com/app/2959, for example.
Libsndfile appears to maily be a common interface for accessing audio
files of various types; in BeOS\Haiku, this sort of functionality is
built into the system and the Media Kit through "translators".  For
more information on translators, see
http://www.beunited.org/bebook/The%20Translation%20Kit/index.html.

> Although not asked by others, I wonder if the devs of Haiku would ever be 
> open to the recommendations from a team of audio developers if it ever were 
> determined that it would actually be better to gut the current audio system 
> in exchange for an even better one (the current devs wouldn't have to code it 
> all, of course :) but I'm speaking more from the point of view of a 
> willingness to break backwards compatibility if something better could be 
> done)?
>

Recommendations and suggestions are always welcome.  For Haiku R1,
backwards compatibility is a major goal and you probably won't make
much headway towards major architectural changes anytime soon.  Plans
for R2 are still in the air, and breaking backwards compatibility in
places would probably have to wait until then.

All that being said, I think once you get to use the Haiku audio
system (and MediaKit in general), you will find that its architecture
makes it easy to create and use powerful media applications and
utilities.  After using it for a while, you start to get frustrated
when switching back to other OSes :)

> BTW, should I make a post here about the what I had in mind for an audio team?
>

That sort of thing deals with far enough into the future that this
list probably isn't the ideal place.  I would recommend the forums on
haiku-os.org or the GlassElevetor mailing list.

> Thanks,
> Kevin
>

HTH,
Ben

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