Re: How to make my AU graph the default output?
Re: How to make my AU graph the default output?
- Subject: Re: How to make my AU graph the default output?
- From: Brian Willoughby <email@hidden>
- Date: Sat, 28 Mar 2009 16:50:37 -0700
On Mar 28, 2009, at 10:54, Ondřej Čada wrote:
Jens,
On Mar 28, 2009, at 5:19 AM, Jens Alfke wrote:
But dammit all -- this inexplainable limitation makes the whole
Core Audio pretty much unusable! What the H did they think of
designing the stuff?!? :-O
Unusable for your specific application.
Quite; also, I am afraid, for any other application whose sound
output (a) was designed without Core Audio (be it since its
capabilities were not needed before or any other reason), (b) can't
be easily completely re-written now, (c) or for any reasons needs
QuickTime.
Basically, what you're doing is criticizing CoreAudio because it was
not designed for applications that were designed without CoreAudio.
Isn't that a Catch-22? It's really one of those "by definition" sort
of things. Of course CoreAudio was designed for new applications to
be written that would take advantage of the new features of
CoreAudio. I would not want to cripple CoreAudio by changing its
focus to sacrifice new applications in favor of supporting old
applications.
CoreAudio has been around for 10 years or more, I don't see why these
old applications cannot have been re-written for CoreAudio some time
during that time frame.
What does this app do? What API does it use to output the rest of
its audio?
It's a carputer software. Does lots of things, from playing music
and movies (QT needed here) through diverse warnings (often beeps,
sometimes NSSound or QTMovie used for playing simple sound files)
to navigator (which speaks to the user through NSSpeechSynth). It
also offers an extendable plugin architecture for modules some of
which may use other sound APIs (including CA itself, though, far as
I can say, this never happened yet ;)).
Works for years in stereo.
Now, the need for Core Audio (or something similar) came when some
of our clients wanted the stereo output split to four channels
normally found in cars (front/rear pairs), along with a few special
considerations (like the parking assistant beeping from the
direction where the obstacle is, which should be easily achieved
with the 3D mixer, or so I think).
Your real complaint, then, is not with CoreAudio, but with all of the
old technologies and applications that you're currently working with.
You have switched from a focus on stereo to a focus on surround, and
as a result, all of the old applications and API that you once used
are now very inadequate because they were not designed for surround.
Of all the tools available to you, CoreAudio is the only one that
fully supports surround. What you need to do is understand how
fragile your system is when you depend upon other people's code. If
you are dependent upon audio code which was not written for
CoreAudio, for which you do not have source code, and which cannot be
re-written for surround, then CoreAudio is the least of your
worries. QuickTime, for one, is a very limited API when it comes to
surround, and you'll have to switch to something else if you want
access to the full capabilities of CoreAudio.
(Yes, Bill said this wasn't possible. These apps do some
unorthodox things like installing kernel extensions, which Apple
isn't going to condone or recommend that people do...)
It's not that big problem for us, since by the very nature of a
carputer we have more or less complete control over the
environment; still I don't like a KEXT-based solution and would
much rather use a cleaner one, if existed.
I still can't get the reasons why there is no "default output AU"
to be put in the graph: seems to me as clean solution as
possible... well, never mind :)
There is a "default output AU" but it only deals with audio from the
current application. What you're asking for is the ability to direct
audio between applications, because you're leveraging applications
that you did not write yourself. CoreAudio is a very efficient and
very capable API. It's primary focus is developers who are writing
new code which will take advantage of these new features. I get the
impression that you are repacking existing applications, and you want
a simple tool that will allow you to add surround features to
programs that you did not write yourself. This seems to me to be
well outside the scope of CoreAudio. There are tools out there that
would make your job easier, but the real solution would be for your
company to develop your own modern software that you have full
control over.
Brian Willoughby
Sound Consulting
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