Audiounits, the beginning of the end! Options

[damann]

I love X so much these days, 9.2 already seems ancient.
CoreAudio and CoreMidi seem to have genuinely provided an
inspiring future for developers, Emagic, Steinberg, in fact, apparently
every developer on our wish list!
I've heard recently that CoreAudio has a native plugin framework that
seiously out-runs ASIO or any of the 3rd party stuff by Digi, Motu etc.
AudioUnits: a direct replacement, with 1ms latency reported, already implemented by Emagic, 100% cocoa, a potential industry standard in the making!
i've already backed up my 4.8.1 logic folder to CD, DVD, AND firewire drive 'cos i just know that VST etc are ultimately doomed.

this experience, although slow, will be the equivalent of completely replacing a studio and it's equipment in order to stay current.
of course there are carbon versions of a lot of the best plugins around
but this is more a question of support from OS & developers for VST etc!

[lepetitmartien]

Drool
Drool
Drool
.
.
.
.

One nation under a groove would be great!
The end of this plugin nonsense (well, I can dream…) But it'll need rewriting for host (in the making) and plugs (one day…it's the sound of silence right now)

[jray]

I agree - the wait is going to be way worth it. This will make software development cheaper in the long run, hopefully paying dividends to us the users: more for less.

[Francois Déchery]

If Apple reach the goal (making a new standart), and they may be abble to do it, this would certainly help to get an amazing plug-in choice, because when a developper will release a plug-in he wont have to choose if the plug will be VST, MAS, Premiere, TDM, RTAS, AS, Logic.
He will just have to concentrate about the plug-in, not the commercial-marketing stupid issues...

Also, this will also let independant developpers to faslty get the Developpement kit, and to release excellent freeware or shareware...
Did you ever see a freeware TDM or RTAS plug-in?

For example Polyfractus/Dragan, who makes amazing plug-ins on the VST platform, would be more than happy to release it under TDM environnment, but he never succeed to get the needed Developpement kit from Digi....
A new standart would solve all theses things..
But will digi/steinberg/motu follow it, or will they continue to promote their formats? Time will tell!

[jray]

Check out:
http://www.apple.com/macosx/technologies/audio.html

Here's a quote -

"Apple includes several Audio Units in Mac OS X, including a Velocity Engine-optimized reverb and a sample rate converter. Apple will release additional Audio Units in the future...Mac OS X includes a Velocity Engine-optimized Virtual Instrument compatible with the industry standard DownLoadable Sounds (DLS) format. The Mac synthesizer provides applications with high quality, low latency sample playback as well as control for filters and envelopes."

Finally - serious DLS support. This will be important for gaming and who knows...maybe it gives Virtual instrument makers a good leaping off point to make their own cheap samplers. If Core Audio's engine is as good as they say it is, why would you write your own? [read the part about M-Audio finding latencies of only 1 ms] It then becomes an issue of tools and feature sets. I know it's not as simple as all that (you still have to know Core Audio well enough to get this kind of performance) but it's only a matter of time before there are just gobs of cheap choices for audio developers.

[damann]

thanks for the info guys.
i'm beginning to see life through aqua tinted glasses now, it looks beautiful!
soif, is codewarrior capable of developing for cocoa? obviously the x developers kit is necassary, but i'm thinking quite seriously about this.

you know, as they say, you can't halt the march of time...

[Francois Déchery]

soif, is codewarrior capable of developing for cocoa?

oups not .
i would have to learn C++ (i guess) to be able to developp Cocoa apps.
But at this time, i've learn enough about PHP/mySQL to start learning a new language...

But Polyfractus allready knows C++ and i'm sure he plans to realease Cocoa apps... may be something soon

[deleted]

Yes, like Soif, i hope all this will unify the plugin market, around an OPEN format, that every develloper could use FREELY.
OS X kernel is open source, so, why not?

I just hope that third party devellopers will release FREE upgrades to their plugins, to support this new native format. At least, at a minor price.
But i'm probably dreaming, in some ways.
Mac OS X is NOT Linux
Bye.

[damann]

adc is definitely not free!
the basic "x" kit is only $20, but all other sdk's are $700-$1200.
codewarrior does support cocao, and it is of course a "c" derivation.
$700 for codewarrior and a further $700 for apples' cocoa sdk will buy you into audio unit developement.
only dragans' knowledge to accumulate and we're winning...
m£r!e!

I like the potential of AudioUnits and MusicDevice. It looks like Apple is SERIOUS about Audio again. I hope Logic OS X supports both VST and AudioUnits. Give me choices and I'll be happy.

[BusError]

adc is definitely not free!
the basic "x" kit is only $20, but all other sdk's are $700-$1200.
codewarrior does support cocao, and it is of course a "c" derivation.
$700 for codewarrior and a further $700 for apples' cocoa sdk will buy you into audio unit developement.
only dragans' knowledge to accumulate and we're winning...
m£r!e!

No AudioUnits development is free.

Apple developer tools are provided with the OS (10.2) and was always available both for download (free) and even installed as a disk image on QuickSilver towers.

With that, you have ProjectBuilder, and you can write whatever component in whatever language you want. That include Kernel extensions, drivers, audiounits (samples are available) cocoa & carbon applications, and command line tools of course.

So, get going

[damann]

thanks BusError.
i will be publishing a list of online resources for dsp coding soon.
i am a member of adc.
any rookies interested here should check out codewarrioru.com,
dspguru.com, richard dobsons' home page, numerical recipes...
as i said, a list coming soon!

[damann]

oh yeah, i should have mentioned that the sdk comes with 10.2 when you buy it...

[shahasad]

Since the Core Audio Framework is written in Objective-C, and uses NS Objects and classes, can one write an app in C++ that takes full advantage of Core Audio and Audio Units?
or
Does one have to write a program in Objective-C?

Apple seems to be pushing developers in the Obj-C direction...

[shahasad]

Apple Audio

Harmony-Central's Programming Section

These sites have tons of useful info and sample code & algorithms for audio....


Hope this helps

[shahasad]

SampleCode

Core Audio Swiki

These are the sites I meant to post...

Sorry

[damann]

thanks shahasad,
if you're writing something from the ground up, it's best to use objective c++.
existing code can of course be re-compiled , there's lots of literature around, it's all pretty standard stuff, c++ really...
"you'll just feel a small prick" seems to be the relevant quote.
i WILL post that list soon, thanks for reminding me!

[peterkirn]

Hang on a second!! Are Audio Units Cocoa ONLY? That could be a major roadblock to developers porting OS 9-based VSTs. Carbon would make development faster. That makes me even more confused about the AU kit Emagic is touting to make switching easier.

Hang on a second!! Are Audio Units Cocoa ONLY? That could be a major roadblock to developers porting OS 9-based VSTs. Carbon would make development faster. That makes me even more confused about the AU kit Emagic is touting to make switching easier.

No I believe you can use Java and Carbon to create Audio Units.

Conventional Wisdom backs this up because Emagic is claiming to offer a simply library tool to port Carbon VST's to Audio Unit which undoubtedly means Audio Units can and will be based on Carbon for the forseeable future.

[shahasad]

The only drawback to using the Carbon Library to port apps is that it is not as optimized for OS X. It was initally intended as a quick fix for developers to use in the meantime until they get their apps ported to Cocoa. The foundation frameworks and NS object classes (As weel as core audio and other Cocoa frameworks) operate at the lowest level of the OS. Carbon does not. Carbon apps can import classes from these, but it is not the same as writing a stright cocoa app.


As for Java, I would never use a Java-based recording app as java is not written for any particular hardware platform and does not contain any low-level memory managent and would be deathly slow.

Internet Explorer is a carbon app. Take that how you will.

I'd been hopeful and sceptical about Audio Units until, well, about five minutes ago. I'd thought that Logic was the only currently available host for AU (and, as my ISP nightmare continues, haven't been able to download the Audio SDK and build a testing app even to pursue my curiousity on this front). I found a nice little freeware app out there, Synthtest. It's just an app that lets you test out AU - both of the instrument variety and the DSP variety. (There are a few out there; www.osxaudio.com seems to be a reasonable reesource).

Anyway, using this nice little AU host has been thrilling. Latency is so minimal as to be imperceptible. And playing around with the Airy Synth AU (AUi? iAU? AUnstrument? someone coin something) was quite satisfying.

I've tons to learn before I could so much as program my way out of a code sample, but I'm lookin forward to learning. And AUs definitely seem the way forward from that perspective.

[Francois Déchery]

We allready link 8 (independant) AU in our software directory:
http://www.macmusic.org/softs/softcat.php/...ang/EN/id/7037/

Is there some we are missing?
Would you guys help us to add others (if any?)

Any help is welcome

[Levon River]

lutefisk: I also suggest you find Rax if you haven't. It's listed on here and on VersionTracker.

Thanks for the heads-up, Levon. I've been using Rax since a day or two after I posted that (end of Oct), and keeping up with its updates, too. Granted Software is working _hard_ on au. There's since, btw, been an update to SynthTest, but it remains primarily a developer-orientated app, worth checking out if that's your bent...

[Levon River]

Thanks for the heads-up, Levon.  I've been using Rax since a day or two after I posted that (end of Oct), and keeping up with its updates, too.

I oughta' start looking at message dates, huh?

Sorry, mate: sorry; sorry...

There's since, btw, been an update to SynthTest, but it remains primarily a developer-orientated app, worth checking out if that's your bent...

Well, I've been accused of being bent in many directions, but that's never been one of them.