Re: aspiring CoreAudio devs
Re: aspiring CoreAudio devs
- Subject: Re: aspiring CoreAudio devs
- From: Ariel Elkin <email@hidden>
- Date: Sat, 04 Aug 2012 14:27:34 +0100
On 4 Aug 2012, at 1:52pm, Paul Davis wrote:
> not understanding the costs of certain ways implementing a particular algorithm, not understanding the pitfalls of realtime programming (*), not being aware of some of the tradeoffs between using memory vs. using computation (and how they change over time) ... these are are the sorts of things that ultimately lead to the difference between a great instrument and one that sounds good only if the player "holds it right".
The original question mentioned "I'm not all that interested in the business of software and I don't imagine I'll be selling applications at all, but I'm really interested in the process of building tools for music." Most of the answers that question got was on how to build a super efficient audio engine, and that's not the same as how to build an engaging music app.
But I agree with you to some extent. Musicians perform instruments in front of audiences. So if you patched together an instrument without any consideration for the things you mention, it's likely to suffer from a technical failure. Technical failures of equipment horribly mar performances and give computers a bad name. Successful instruments are dependable, and a truly great instrument must be performance-ready.
Now if your UI is ugly, if using your app is complicated, if your sounds are boring, then it doesn't matter if your audio engine is stable and efficient. For the large majority of users, computational efficiency is not a priority at all. What's important to them is latency and that the app doesn't crash.
The libraries I mentioned (STK and Maximilian) are stable and provide you with reasonably fast and efficient synths (I myself use the STK in the apps I have in the app store). Using readymade building blocks is not a matter of laziness, it's about not reinventing a wheel that takes a lot of time and energy to reinvent. Your time is limited, so you should use those blocks so that you can spend more time on things that are crucial to a high quality unique music app such as sound design, interaction design, and visual design.
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