ralbus

u/ralbus@waveform.social
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I'm Rob. I have a background was in electronic music production, music mastering, location sound for (very amateur) film, field recording and sound design, etc.

I had a very unrelated career and transitioned into tech a number of years ago. In 2021 I started getting into audio coding with ChucK. I found the edges of it pretty quickly and moved over to C++ for my audio ambitions. I made a detour into Rust but didn't stick around.

I am currently working on my own audio engine. The primary goal is to create music and sonic art with it. A secondary goal is to open source the project and start blogging about it. If anything listed below is interesting to you and you would like to read about it in a blog, please let me know!

Details about the engine:

  • the core is a directed signal graph
    • allows feedback loops without breaking acyclicity
    • type level IO matching: intellisense/compiler enforcement for connecting nodes
    • IO types can be anything, doesn't have to be audio
  • compiles as a static library with CMake
  • test suite with GTest
  • Audio output with PortAudio
  • .wav output with Libwave
  • MIDI input with RtMidi (kind of buggy)

So far I have used to the engine to build a few GUI-less tools:

  • wavetable oscillator with stereo detune
  • NxOsc - N oscillator subtractive synth
  • data and target agnostic step sequencer
  • Filters and EQs
  • Various envelopes: ADSR, automation clip

I am re-inventing the wheel with a lot of this, but it's helped me understand how to invent wheels which is pretty cool.

I also build scalable platforms for my day job. I was a bit trepidatious when I started with audio coding personally. There have been some challenging concepts to learn along the way (of course), but I personally have found it to be no less accessible than other complex code/infra work. In my experience it will take some endurance and persistence to make ground - but you already clearly have some background in the musical domain. That would carry you a long way!